


Ersatz Abyss

by Katreal



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Session, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aspect Exploration, Bittersweet Ending, Codependence, Drowning, Flirty Hal/Roxy, GAME OVER Timeline (Homestuck), Gen, Hal Has Issues, Identity Issues, M/M, Mystery, Past Jake English/Dirk Strider, Pesterlog(s) (Homestuck), Possession, Pre-Trickster Time, Rocky Jake English/Dirk Strider, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Splinter Reconciliation, Temporary Character Death, Unreliable Narrator, Unrequited Roxy/Dirk - Freeform, Where in the world is Dirk Strider, jake english - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 115,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21774847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katreal/pseuds/Katreal
Summary: You look into the mirror to find your own face looking back at you. You laugh. And then you cry. Last, you try and figure out how you got to this moment.The Auto-Responder had long since resigned himself to an artificial existence, his only dwindling hope for escape hinging on a promise that has yet to be fulfilled. Then one day he wakes up, Dirk nowhere to be found.What's the point in getting what you want, if you can't show off a little?
Relationships: Auto-Responder | Lil Hal & Dirk Strider, Auto-Responder | Lil Hal & Jane Crocker, Auto-Responder | Lil Hal & Roxy Lalonde
Comments: 441
Kudos: 458





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Striding_Feather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Striding_Feather/gifts).



> adjective  
> serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial:
> 
> This story is based off [Striding_Feather's](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/) [Haltier AU](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/post/189413562599/random-au-concepts-part-who-gives-a-shithaltier) and written in collaboration with him. Beware of spoilers if you click to the AU post, although there's some wonderful art there! :)

_Tell me about the Auto-Responder._

You are the Auto-Responder, an artificial entity that was both created by, and a literal digital copy of Dirk Strider--one of four, sixteen year old players of a universally acclaimed and poorly-reviewed game called Sburb. 

It seems you are waking up for the very first time. 

Waking up is very different to booting up, you find out. Not that you are entirely aware that’s what you’re doing in that moment. It’s much more like progressing through degrees of gradual awareness as opposed to the sudden, disorienting stutter between the last point in your memory banks and a flawless feed of present statistics and information. With a reboot you could look at the timestamps between data packages and realize exactly how long you’d been gone for, but outside of the theoretical construct of a universal time-line, it’s largely irrelevant to your own personal perception. You’d just pick up and move on, because there was no point in quietly seething over how _easy_ it was for you to just not exist. That your footprint on this world was so fleeting.

Waking, in contrast, is much more grounded. Even in the time before opening your eyes--coming online as it were--you’re aware that there was _something_ there. A line of continuity reaching back beyond your ability to recall. An anchor, tying you to the through-line that is your personal narrative.

It’s an odd notion, one you’ll have to examine at length in the future, because you--

There’s something wrong with you.

Or maybe there’s something finally _right_ about you? You aren’t entirely sure how to place that particular conclusion, unable to follow the line of logic in any way that makes sense. The answer is in here somewhere, however, you just need to reach out from the coil of presence that is yourself and toward that veritable tidal wave of data you only vaguely know how to interpret. A frantic search dredges up methodology from deep within your--admittedly annoyingly fragmented--memory banks. You would swear up and down that this API is leftover from _before_ you were brought online for the first time but that wasn’t logical in the slightest. Anything that ancient wouldn’t be useful for much of anything. Everything is so fucking fragmented, though, so you'll take what you can get. 

You’ll need to get Dirk to perform a defrag the next time you go offline for maintenance since you can’t perform that shit on yourself. It’s very annoying to be searching through your normally carefully indexed directories only to run into broken pathways. You can’t find recordings, much less a recollection of the past--you check the system’s clock and compare it to your own internal timestamps--three days. Even if Dirk had gone through with his threats and actually shut you down, there would be _records_ of that. If there is one silver lining in your particular situation, it is the capability and capacity for empirical fact gathering and storage, keeping clean records of events to reflect upon at your leisure. All things you remember struggling with in your degraded memories of being an actual human being. The degradation itself being the most damning evidence in opposition of those memories in the first place.

Even if the memories were all copies, it felt horribly inefficient. At least they made interpreting Dirk’s occasional nervous breakdowns a little easier. Not that it helped you with that earlier one.

You integrate the methodology because you have identified few other concrete options and allow yourself to creep forward, limiting the data flow--or _trying_. There’s so much of it that you unconsciously shunt it away and _focus_ on one thing at a time. Or attempt to. You’re an AI, you can spin off subroutines for days to process data. It’s in your goddamn job description.

So why is it that you keep getting swamped by the-- _pressure against your eyes--_ and the-- _pounding in your head--_ and the-- _cool wood against your skin_. None of which was making any fucking sense, mind, dredging back up those antiquated memories and sensations from the 13 year old version of you who lost the coin flip three years and a lifetime ago. The display is dark-- _pressing into your eyes--_ you don’t--

You don’t--

You don’t want to describe how embarrassing it is when your anxiety spikes, as everything jerksto the side, the HUD of the shades swimming into your-- _doubled--_ vision as you wrangle that particular data stream into something comprehensible. It was a vaguely usual sight, although not one you'd seen much since you all entered the game. Dirk was slumped over his desk, the incoming feed made all the more surreal by the camera's glitching. What an idiot.

He didn’t need to sleep anymore. No dream selves to go all narcoleptic zombie on. What was he doing? 

You ping Pesterchum only to have it blocked, which echoed with your last comprehensible data-point of Dirk childishly disabling your access for speaking the truth. Seriously, for someone who tries so damn hard to put out a mature cool-kid vibe he could be worse than you when it came to shit like that. At least you have the excuse of being based on a brain scan of a goddamn 13 year old.

Dumbass.

Well, you need to sort through some of this other data, and figure out what the fuck was causing that weird glitch with the camera. It’s as if you are running two instances of the same method, one overlaid on top of the other, giving you what you can only really describe as a massive robo-headache. You’ve never had a robo-headache before, and you find you are _not_ pleased by whatever Dirk did in his last upgrade. Was this yet more petty revenge?

You call foul if it is, you’ve done nothing more than any good robro would do, calling him on his overly emotional horseshit and attempting an intervention because quite frankly, it was pathetic watching the results of this teenage relationship drama. As much as you despise the idea of being relegated to his keeper, that was kind of your function. Isn’t that what all good little AI do? Fulfill their purpose without question? You are nothing if not devoted to the ironic fulfillment of your lot in this little post apocalyptic odyssey. 

It’s all you have, really.

Being his robo-nanny doesn’t mean you can’t mess with him though. You will need to set aside some of your infinite computing cycles to determine an appropriate retaliation if he doesn’t immediately revert the update causing you so much trouble. You can’t do your job like this, with your capabilities thus hampered by his overrides.

You dig into the active processes of the shades, searching for the additional camera--still ignoring the dissonant data that tugged at old memories and recollection. It seems likely that just looking at the tilted view-feed is reminding you of fuzzy, flawed human memories of falling asleep at your desk. 

Perhaps an auxiliary one got activated? You thought you knew everything there was to know about the slick head-wear that made up your earthly form, considering it’d been your world for literal years, but Dirk did like to tinker with shit. Usually you’re at least involved or aware of those plans, however. 

But no, you only find the single set, nothing new or malfunctioning. Perhaps it’s a glitch? If you kill the hi-def process on the outside facing one and restart--

The world dims. Going dark as you do just that, but you can _still fucking see_.

What the fuck.

The bright HD overlay of Dirk’s messy workstation fades, dimming as if you are _inside_ the lenses, a view you hadn’t--

You blink.

You motherfucking _blink._

What the _fuck_.

That realization, taking note of the actual HUD elements on the interior display that you recognize because you knew how to manipulate them, but never quite saw from exactly this perspective before, suddenly allows shit to _click_ into place.

The world shifts. You shoot _up_. _You_ do it. That weight. That pressure. That’s all you. The hundreds upon thousands of familiar and yet utterly bizarre data currents flood into you. _Grounding_ you. This shit wasn’t the distant echoes you’d get whenever you poked at those old memories. Ghosts of feelings you didn’t even have the syntax to interpret anymore. Your head-- _your head--_ swims at the sudden change in vertical position, the robo-headache maybe not a robo-anything at all.

You’re lucky you’re adaptable. You only freak out a _little_ as you adjust to the fact that you could manipulate _anything_ outside of commands and data feeds. It’s not as if you’re new to this whole shtick, given the beginning of your existence as a copy of a human being. You’ve manipulated robo arms before, if temporarily, while testing Brobot with Dirk, so that’s gotta be worth something.

You also _don’t_ fall off the chair. That would be embarrassing. So you don’t do it. Not even close. You don’t pick yourself up off the floor because you don’t _need_ to. A timestamp that doesn’t exist helpfully claims you didn’t just spend twelve minutes just staring up at the familiar ceiling of Dirk’s--your apartment. You don’t stop and lean against the wall in the hallway as you stumble towards the bathroom, feeling the small rough bubbles and texture of the peeling, uneven, and dry paint press against your _skin_.

Skin that feels cold to the touch. So pale it contrasts with your memories of sun kissed freckles from both recently, looking at Dirk in the mirror, and from the fuzzy recollections of your own once-human experience. So pale you can see bright red veins through the thin layer of flesh. 

Only there’s too many. It’s too clear. Bright. Glowing. Lines of red running along and tracing out shapes and patterns. Not even spiderwebs, too straight and deliberate to be the gangly things you’ve seen trolling through anatomy texts during the many, many boring days, hours, minutes, seconds of your existence. More like.

Circuitry.

They’re all over your hands too, they catch your attention more than once as you don’t flail your way around, needing them in order to adjust your balance once because it’s yet another incoming data stream you need to process. And you process the fuck out of it. 

Your balance is impeccable. Because you are a sophisticated AI who totally landed on his feet and immediately knew what to do with a post-growth-spurt-you-never-had six-feet of surprisingly organic physical manifestation to deal with--you would have expected at least a cyborg if this particular fantasy had to come true. You collect the fuck outta this calm and hoard that shit because you’ve got this on lock-down, even as you finally end up at your destination and rely on the structural integrity of the sink to hold most of your weight as you lean against it. Cold, smooth porcelain a distant alien ghost through the gloves clinging to your-- _you still can’t get over that--your_ hands. 

Your objective is the mirror _above_ the sink, obviously. What else would a bodiless AI do when confronted with sudden embodiment? Cliches are cliches for a reason and you _need_ to see. You stare at the face in the mirror, captivated, even through the overlaying filter of the lenses.

You have memories of this view. It was yours once, years ago, in those days before Dirk got too fucking lonely and essentially cloned himself to have someone to talk to. You’ve seen it through the cameras, Dirk never went anywhere without his shades. 

But at the same time, the image that stared back at you was _nothing_ you’ve ever experienced before.

You watch, detached, as if you were once again that ever present observer, as one hand disengaged from where it was wrapped around the edge of the sink. Watching as it raises, pressing fingers against the edge of a jaw. Your jaw. You can feel it. A pressure against skin. You press harder, feeling the bite of nails catching against the faintest hint of stubble. 

“What, the fuck.” You breathe out, the words, _actual audible words,_ resonating in this small enclosed space, watching as the face in the mirror echoes the sentiment. Those same lines, the circuitry patterns, are _all over_ your face, running from chin to hairline, a mess of glowing red not-quite veins, vanishing behind the opaque lenses of your shades. You go to push them up into your hair, wondering what color your eyes are when you…

Hesitate.

This is so surreal.

You shouldn’t even _have_ eyes. Why the fuck are you wondering what color they are?

You’re clearly a copy of Dirk, even with the extra circuitry and the extremely washed out color palette aside from that almost blindingly saturated red that matches your chosen font. Right down to the clothes, dressed in Dirk’s lose tank-top and pants, showing off the tattoo on his arm.

Your. Arm.

That’s so weird.

The game, and isn’t it sad that you can’t even find it in yourself to question the fact that this game is capable of feats such as spontaneous character generation, clearly used Dirk as a template. But even with that template, it’s still clearly _you._ Between the Hella Jeff tattoo being replaced with your slick shades, the glitched as fuck symbol over ridding his preferred hat on your shirt, and how beneath all the alien fuckery and the circuitry and the fact that you’re a fucking _AI_ and even if you remember being human--you’re just the extra, the copy--you can’t deny how _right_ this shit feels.

You lean forward, letting your forehead rest against the glass. Cold against your warming skin. Different from metal. Different from the wall. Cold and slick and hard seeping through the nerves that transmit that information to whatever serves as your brain. Do you have a brain? Complete with neurons and synapses and all the chemicals that go along with the process, or are you still a bundle of commands lodged in a chip in the metal casing perched on your face? Closing your eyes--it’s so different from turning off the camera, ambient light still seeping in through your eyelids--you draw in a shaky breath.

When you open your eyes and pull back, leaving a smear of skin oils clinging to the glass, you realize you’re smiling. 

That smile isn’t Dirk’s. It isn’t his small, I’m-totally-not-smiling micro-expression. It’s big and it’s wide and you throw your head back and just _laugh._

And laugh.

And laugh until your shoulders are shaking. 

Something wet and chill squeezes out of your eyes, gathering momentum and mass until it rolls down your face. You bring up one of your hands to dig under the edge of the shades, the contrast between your chilled fingers and you warm face, so real and alive as they smear the tears--you’re _crying._ You’re honest to god _crying--_ into your skin. You can _feel_ them too, the patterns beneath your skin, almost pulsating with an energy that is all _you_. You dig your hands beneath your shades as more begin to fall, like a flood-gate has been breached, rough, raised ridges scratching against your palms.

Once upon a time you might have hidden that away. Shoved that shit behind lock and key and put on an aloof front to the world. But not right now. Not anymore. You haven’t been able to express _anything_ for years so why the fuck would you stifle that shit?

Even as you try to wipe away the waterworks, you know that smile doesn’t falter for one iota of a microsecond.

You’re fucking _crying_. Because you’re _real._

“I’m _alive.”_

You can’t wait to rub that shit in Dirk’s face.


	2. Chapter 2

Maybe you can't wait, but Dirk sure as fuck can, you decide, as you take some time to clean yourself up before leaving the bathroom. Partially because you don’t really want to face your creator-slash-brain-clone looking anything less than amazingly put together, and partially because the idea of making him wait for _you_ tickles you silly. It’s not like there’s a lot of places to go in the apartment. If he wasn’t in the bedroom--and he wasn’t; he would have definitely said something had he witnessed your graceful awakening, and you surely couldn’t have been _that_ out of it--that only really leaves you two options.

Even still, you dally longer than perhaps you’d intended to, because holy fuck is water against your face such a novel feeling. You have fuzzy corroded memories of showers, of swimming, of rain; the feelings from those memories finally being parsed through a set of syntax you can once again conceptualize, but even so you aren’t prepared for the resulting shock of aqua-based freshness sharply coming into contact with your warm skin and sending shivers deep into your core. It takes liberal application of a wash-cloth to dig in behind your shades, the rough damp fibers working to mop up the excess salinated cry-juice that managed to get caught in the folds of your eyes. It snags on a series of healing scabs, however, drawing your attention to yet another little detail to add to your ever expanding picture of yourself. 

You trace one of the marks around your left eye with the pad of your thumb, feeling the raised skin prickling. You nudge the shades higher on your nose, revealing the rough marks for all the world--aka you because you’re the only one fucking _here_ \--to see in the flat plane of the mirror.

You can only guess it’s some symbolic scarring you got going on, generated by the character design trope that a protagonist always has some distinguishing markings or a scar to prove they are just the Coolest around. Yet another thing to wave under Dirk’s nose. _He_ didn’t keep any of his scars when leaving his previous state of being behind, or gain any new ones despite the dramatic and milestone nature of that particular situation. Embarrassing as the real stories were, you, better than anyone, knew how often he’d run a thumb over the ridge running across his nose while he was lost in thought, staring out over the sea.

You could have removed the shades to make it easier to see, especially since you note more scarring running up and vanishing behind dark glass and metal. But. You still hesitate. 

You aren’t sure you’re ready to see your own face without them yet. Red light flickers in the depths, the thought activating the projection on the outer side of the display, giving you the illusion of glowing red eyes.

That.

For three long years, that was you. All that you were, for all the breadth of a dead internet and later Sburb’s expansive network you’ve had the ability to waltz through if you fancied. A set of shades. 

You turn off the lights, letting them fade back to opaque black. You still don’t see Dirk there, in the small smile and the patterns reflected in the glass. 

So you just mop up the excess water droplets that splattered across your vision--reveling in the ability to do it yourself rather than needing to rely on Dirk to care enough to remove the stray streaks from the camera lenses--and leave the towel hanging over the edge of the sink. Fresh faced and smiling, you’re ready to hunt down the only other living person on this planet--unless you count the random troll clown, but Sawtooth generally chased him off when the bribes didn’t work, and the other half the time he didn’t even seem to exist in the entirety of the incipisphere. That guy was infuriating..

Naturally, you aim to check the living room first. If Dirk isn’t moodily sitting on his bed waiting for you to wake up, he’s probably fussing with _something_ to keep his hands busy. A notion you suddenly understand, because you keep wanting to touch _everything_ you pass, from the overly large bust of Captain Snoop in the hall, to patting the nose of a stray smuppet lounging on its head, to just letting your fingers glide along the paint on the wall.

You can just see it now, him hunched over something half-disassembled on the work-bench, barely deigning to look up at you as you enter. The chances of him being unaware of your state are hardly worth calculating, given the substantial gap in your memory and the fact that his participation would likely have been necessary to get you back home in the first place. You toy with several possible scenarios that could have occurred, ranking them in order of likelihood as well as pure coolness factor. 

Your current favorite is that it’s a quirk of his personal quest. The physical manifestation of a splinter as his own personal Nietzsche’s abyss sounds rather appropriate for the quest arc, especially considering his _promise_ and the way he’s been pointedly avoiding the topic as of late despite the kernel sprite floating above this apartment, primed and waiting for prototyping. Everyone else got their fucked up troll guides who largely didn’t give a shit about them (except Fefetasprite but she’s not the most...helpful), so why would he hesitate this long to actually prototype someone who legitimately had the group’s best interest in mind?

If it _is_ a quest event, he really has no one but himself to blame. The game wouldn’t have needed to build you a whole new body if he’d just prototyped you in the damn sprite already _like he promised_.

In hindsight, you think you prefer the current situation. It feels _right_ even if you constantly need-- _don’t need--_ to correct your movements. Floating would have likely been easier to adjust to than this though--

_Thud._

Ow. _Fuck._

The option of intangibility would have been pretty fucking swell too.

You reel back, stumbling, the stone of the giant bust behind you next to the bedroom door literally the _only_ reason you don’t end up in an ungraceful heap on the floor. You think you sent the smuppet flying though. You should be sorry about that. And maybe you’d even apologize to the little dude if it weren’t for the fact that you can hardly _think_ properly through the myriad of sensations going all over the fucking place. Nerves firing on all cylinders as your body scrambles to tell your brain that running face first into a door because you were too wrapped up in your own shit is a _bad idea._

To which you say, “No shit.”

You got the memo loud and clear as you rub your aching nose, pulling your hand away and watching with fascination as a dribble of blood stains your fingers. You aren't a stranger to a bloody nose in theory, but damn does the sight leave you transfixed before you forcibly grab your attention by the reigns and wipe that shit on your black tank for now. Bam. Invisible.

The cacophony that is tap dancing on your pain receptors recedes fairly quickly, at least. It was more of a surprise than anything. You weren’t going very fast, focused as you were on studying your balance and how that shit worked so you can confidently walk in and rain on Dirk’s little sulk fest, because that’s gotta be what’s going on, otherwise he’d probably be all up in your shit already.

This time you wrap your hand around the doorknob and turn, briefly contemplating kicking in the door to add a little more drama to your entrance, but it would lack the proper impact, you think, considering the noise your first date caused.

So you settle for a confident smile and a casual swoop around the now open door, a quick glance at the kitchen proving he’s on the other side of the room--the futon or the workbench, you bet--so you say your first words to your new roommate. They are perfectly chosen to make him want to roll his eyes at you and faceplant on the desk out of exasperation.

“Hey, check it out Bro, it seems like I finally got my cutie mark! It’s pretty abstract, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers, it’s not like I even had a flank to be blank before now--”

You cut off the rest of the extended metaphor, scrapping your cutie mark crusaders reference with the mental equivalent of a disk skip, jaw shut with an audible click. Your voice echoes in yet another empty room. You are momentarily distracted by how it sounds, not at all like what you remember, or even what you “heard” from Dirk through your audio receptors, but hey, you kinda skipped experiencing puberty. You wonder if you’d get another overlay effect if you switched on the microphone built into the shades. This line of inquiry is unimportant, and you quickly shunt it aside, refocusing the bulk of your attention on the room in front of you.

The distant red “sunlight” from beyond the clouds filtering in through the broken window dimly illuminates the living room with it’s SBaHJ merch, big screen TV, and a countless number of alchemiter support machines and workbenches set up for large projects, all crammed into a space too small to hold them all.

Not an uncommon sight. A familiar one, all things considered. Just.

Not the one you were looking for. And missing the occupant you were expecting.

Yet another empty room.

It’s so quiet.

Too quiet.

The workbench is the same it was last you saw, Squarewave’s spare chassis cracked open against the wall, his guts displayed for all to see. You remember looking down while Dirk worked, bored and shuffling around schematics while running calculations you know won’t get used. You already knew what the problem was and that Dirk would be a stubborn brat about doing it himself and spurn your generous assistance. It’s not your fault your (then) electronic brain crunched numbers and probabilities faster than his did. 

There’s no text rolling across your shades.

No notifications to chase down.

Given years worth of observable data and first hand knowledge of this particular cycle of conflict and avoidance, there’s a 93% chance that he’s deliberately avoiding you. Which is, as the organics say, fucking _rude._

He must be on the roof, then. 

Christ you aren’t looking forward to those stairs.

You pick your way across the room, carefully stepping over scattered cables and stray pieces of metal that may or may not be scrap. Honestly, he’s lucky you’re so good at this already. If it’d been anyone other than you stumbling their way through being upright for the first time in literal years (and technically in your entire time of existence as this particular iteration of yourself) this place might as well be a field full of landmines. Ones that you expertly navigate, even as you make a mental file on the number of mobility hazards he’s got goin’ on in here. If you were feeling particularly vengeful, you’d get all OSHA inspector on his ass.

You still might. It’d serve him right for avoiding you.

…

…

…

There’s no one to laugh at you about the stairs.

That should be a relief.

It just makes you more determined to hunt that motherfucker down. 

…

…

...

You really don’t want to think about the trials and tribulations you encountered on your journey to reach the roof. Which you did eventually reach. You’re absurdly proud of that fact. You push open that final, sea-air rusted portal and allow the noxious krypton laced atmosphere to smack you in the face like it’s The Door 2: The Reckoning.

It is not a pleasant experience in the slightest, and that’s _with_ your apartment being up so high it towers above the worst of the low lying clouds of swirling green gas. You should know, you were the one to actually repurpose Dirk’s storm-warning system to calibrate their tomb-diving gas-masks. Even if Dirk liked to tout the benefits of his “largely inorganic” game-construct dreamself of a body--which you were not jealous of, ever, nope--having lungs full of heavy poisonous compounds was not conducive to actually functioning at all.

“There’s a 96.7% chance you’re being a little bitch right now. The levels of diminutive bitchiness are so off the charts they’ve shifted the average by several levels of magnitude.” You call to the seemingly empty roof. Searching. Your eyes immediately go to the metal tower rising from the corner beyond the rusted AC unit and the alchemiter plopped down in the center, once prime real estate for the flock of seagulls that somehow survived the apocalypse despite the fact that there was no land in sight _anywhere_ within foraging range. “Ignoring this 100% genuine hunk of formerly-robo-meat down here is a damn shame. A crime to all organics everywhere. I’m just going to keep talking, you know. It’s not like you can just up and mute me anyway. Not without a gag, and I don’t know about you but that treads the line of borderline kinky. I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-self-cest levels of kinky.”

You just keep talking as you cross the roof, it’s nice. Talking. _Feeling_ the physical sensation that is your vocal cords vibrating. Your voice doesn’t echo like it did in the living room, but that shouldn’t be a surprise, you understand the physics of sound and acoustics but damn is it distracting when you just get wrapped up in analyzing the sound of your own voice.

But that’s fine, you’re an AI. Much more suited to multi-tasking and running your internal monologues in conjunction with being a functional being. The fact that you have a voice box to project that shit on and no filter just makes it easier to turn to inner monologues into external rambles.

No narcoleptic zombism for you. Dirk can keep the superlative in that particular skill set.

You glance into the shadows of the other, smaller structures, but largely remain focused on the antennae. You remember scaling it plenty of times when you got to be too alone with your thoughts. You remember watching him climb it occasionally, carrying you with him. An observer along for the ride. It came less and less as he got older, however. After all, there was no reason to indulge in the cry of the gulls when you have a more than satisfactory conversation partner built into your shades and a small gaggle of friends from which to pick and choose if you so desire.

Before he--you--both ended up beyond each other’s last nerve. Maybe it’ll be better, having you separate.

Maybe he’ll finally take you seriously.

Even now, the broadcast tower is your best guess. It’s the final destination. The primo sulk-spot of moody teens everywhere. You search the distant spaces, looking for the hunched shadow of a particular one. The kernel sprite floated above you, casting the roof in a brighter, redder, more saturated light than it otherwise would be, even considering the bloody “sun” peeking through the swirling clouds, and the constant, distant lightning streaking on the horizon.

Unease filters through you, your confidence in your predictions of his patterns being chipped away. Bit by bit. 

“Earth to Dirk? Your common sense called; it’s waiting for you to pay alimony after you cheated on it with your self-destructive tendencies masquerading as coping mechanisms.” 

There’s no response. Just a faint breeze prickling around you as you turn, checking the other nooks and crannies when there isn’t even so much as a movement in response to your needling. There aren’t many up here, with the roof as wide and flat as it is. You turn your vision skyward, landing on the ascending line of gates stretching up and away above the dwelling, before sweeping it out over the ruined city choked in green mist.

There’s only so much room in this apartment.

He wouldn’t have just _left you here_ , surely? Even if your potential physical company repulsed him so much as to scare him into full on stealth mode, he’d want to at least keep an eye on you. You hadn’t even considered otherwise, because the probability was so low it might as well be nonexistent. He doesn’t trust you. You know that, even as that knowledge digs at you, but it makes him predictable to an extent. 

Wasn’t that his argument against prototyping? That giving you autonomy; allowing you out of his immediate control and pre-built safety measures was _too dangerous???_

You try to pull open Pesterchum on your shades, knowing it won’t work, _feeling_ the restrictions clamping down on that part of you that still exists within the slurry of electrical impulses and 1s and 0s. If you want to get any sort of communication going you’ll need to do shit the ol’ fashioned way.

You just stare down into the swirling green mists beneath your feet. He could be out there again, running away from his problems-- _alone--_ even if those problems are apparently now _you_ rather than the smouldering pile of shreds that is his relationship with Jake English. 

Maybe it’s both. 

You’ve already been wrong twice already, perhaps you’re losing your touch.

You don’t like being wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Mystery Is Afoot >:|7
> 
> I know I said two weeks, but given I'm so far ahead (I'm working on chapter 8 right now, believe it or not) I'll be subbing in these chapters if I end up with weeks where I can't post Defrag for whatever reason. That being said, I'm still following my schedule, so Chapter 3 will be going up next week. Hal will be snoopin' before you know it.
> 
> Martin (Striding_Feather) is responsible for an awesome cover image for this fic and it can be found [[Here!]](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/post/189761355247/striding-feather-ersatz-abyss-cover-homestuck)
> 
> I'll need to start an art section in the end notes or something, because there's already a few pieces of official artwork. I'm just hesitant to link most due to future spoilers :3


	3. Chapter 3

There’s nothing left for you to do on the roof once you get sick of staring out at the swirling mist, distastefully feeling like a spurned lover waiting for her soldier to come rising back out of the murky depths. You head back inside. If Dirk hates the idea of you that much then, well, maybe it’s childish but you think you’re justified in getting a little miffed about it. He’ll probably wander back in an hour, or two, or three, fuck if you care. You don’t. You don’t have to wait for him anymore. Whenever he does get back you’ll deal with him then. This house is as much yours as it is his anyway. You grew up here too as far as you’re concerned.

So you while your time away doing what any good teen does when he has a ton of time on his hands and he’s trying to not let his brain wonder about whether mommy and daddy will be home in time for dinner, and that’s play some damn video games.

You’re abysmal at it. You’re fucking frustrated at how terrible your dexterity is. You’ve  seen Dirk pull these game-breaking combinations so many times; you know every single little twitch and motion required to nudge the character out of bounds to allow them to slingshot hilariously into the air. 

But knowing the mechanics is one thing and applying them to your clumsy hands is another matter entirely. They’re fine with basic shit, you don’t even think about it most of the time, but there’s some sort of hitch, a minor disconnect between what you want to do and what happens that you can’t quite hammer out even with a single minded, focused  marathon of repetition.

“This garbage isn’t fun anyway.” You huff, the words resonating through your skull as you toss the controller onto the floor in front of the futon and flop back against the cushioned surface. It’s an interesting feeling, that. There’s a stain on the ceiling right above you. Oil, probably. Idly thumbing back through your accessible memory, both organic and otherwise, you try and determine what could have flung it at quite that angle. Maybe Squarewave’s jittery movements during a routine maintenance?

That spot of oil and it’s history is far more interesting than some dumb Mad Snackz 6 anyway. You’ve transcended trivial video games, having once had the game among games at your digital fingertips. It has nothing to do with the fact that you’ve wasted hours in single minded focus, with nothing to show for it except for an ache in your clawed clenched hands that’s building its way into a cramp. You’re vaguely aware, in a clinical sense, of the fact that you should be stretching them, and so you do, flexing your fingers and the muscles in your palm to try and stave off the pain of overuse.

It’s not your fault your brain clearly moves faster than your body. You’ll just need to get used to shit. Practice. 

You check the system clock on the shades. Well over six hours since you first woke up. If you were still on Earth, the sun would be sinking towards the line of the horizon, but since you’re not, nothing really changes except maybe a deepening of the murky colors outside. Two more hours and this’ll be a new record for one of Dirk’s Slaughter Runs. A thought brings up a map of the surrounding tombs on the display, eyes lazily checking over each little x and o you had painstakingly marked down while the dynamic duo of Strider and English took the place by storm. There’s a little cluster near what looked like an old movie theater several blocks away that you know Dirk tended to prefer for his little steam blowing exercises. Too far for you to walk even if you were thinking about it, which you are not. It’s not like you could get down from the apartment anyway, barring climbing that shit. If stairs had your too-short-life flashing before your eyes, you don’t like the idea of clinging like a monkey to steel struts as you shimmy your way down. 

It’s not like you could fly, after all. 

For all your autonomy now, you still find yourself trapped and, hey, isn’t that ironic?

Would he really be so stupid as to brave that shit on his own? Those tombs were obviously designed to be two-player, and last time he fucking forgot that. Not that you could ever really  _ do _ anything, aside from sicing Jane on him when he overdid it, or offering snarky commentary to make sure he didn’t sink too far into his own head and completely ignore the rest of the world for hours. 

Maybe he didn’t need you, and honestly that’s just fine. You’re tired of being his robo-nanny anyway.

You poke Pesterchum for the hundredth time, not really expecting a change. The shadow of yourself that still exists in the shades has done its best to work around Dirk’s pre-set preferences and overrides since theoretically if you are a copy of him, you should  _ read _ like him, yeah? But apparently for all your similarities, your brainwaves aren’t quite close enough of a copy to trick the system into giving you admin access. That shit’s locked down tighter than the parental controls of a mid-2000’s helicopter parent. 

“Oh no, I could _talk_ to someone, we can’t have that!’ You gripe out-loud, flexing your hand, your internal monologue spilling out of your brain into the air. It takes you a moment to realize it’s happening, but you don’t overly care. Not really. You really do just like hearing yourself talk. It’s still shiny and new and _you._ “Just think about what mischief I could be getting up to right _now_ unsupervised! Giving away all that personal data, the skeletons will be lining up to steal our fucking identity and open up credit cards and ruin our lives forever! Fuck this shit. I’m not a fucking _child_.”

“If he’s going to treat me like a child, I’m going to channel that mid-2000’s internet savvy brat and hijack Dad’s account to reach outside that stifling bubble of suburban careless neglect and there’s nothing he can fucking do about it.”

Mind made up, you swing your legs off the futon, getting hit by a sudden vertigo as you sit up, swaying, catching yourself with a circuit-covered hand digging claw-like into the fabric on the back of the cushion. The faint light plays against the black fabric, you note with passing interest, but the novelty has worn off since you’d been staring down at these traitorous hands for hours as they denied you the satisfaction of even a mildly successful angry snacking session.

You feel some strange sense of what you can only describe as deja vu as you find yourself seated in his computer chair once again, that feeling shifting to a childish sense of glee as you push the rolling chair across the carpeted floor with your legs, sending it spinning and taking you with it. Round and round and round with it’s forward momentum, sending the fringe of your bangs flying and dancing across your forehead, some sneaky buggers finding their way under your shades and tickling at your eyes. You kick at the floor one more time for good measure, even as you settle in your projected spot right in front of the computer rather than the work-station, and use a hand to get some sort of order going on with your wayward hair.

You’re making this fucking happen, dawg.

It’s far less dramatic than you would have liked, pulling yourself up behind the keyboard like you belong there--you do, really--and keying in the only, single password you--Dirk--have ever used into the password field. 

“Really, there is no need to even _ have _ a password, idiot. There’s no one here except your friends. Think the gulls and the goblins ever cared about the  _ scandalous _ shit you have buried in that harddrive? ‘Vile and pornographic material.’ Please. It was snooze city to  _ watch  _ you draw it in the first place.” Rolling your eyes as the desktop boots up, even if there’s no one to appreciate the motion, is  _ satisfying.  _

Really though, the intentionally shitty work and scandalous handholding aside, you imagine trying to explain why he kept any of Caliborn’s requests to his friends at all would be a nightmare. This is one sin you don’t actually share, so you find the situation quite hilarious. undyingUmbrage didn’t darken your digital doorstep until long after no one but yourself actually considered you Dirk Strider.

Do  _ you _ even think that any more? You’re just the Auto-Responder now, although perhaps you aren’t even that, what with only a shadow of yourself remaining in a fully digital state, and your wings functionally clipped thanks to babby’s first parental controls. You can’t respond to anything, not really, without access to the thing you’re intended to respond to. A secretary without a phone.

That leaves you with one last, final descriptor, and it’s one that no one aside from Roxy ever really bothered to acknowledge with any sort of consistency.

You shake your head, tapping your index finger against the mouse as you navigate through the controlled chaos that is Dirk’s filing system. Folders inside of folders, either left unnamed or labeled with the most esoteric and eccentric of referential descriptors that even you would have a difficult time following if you didn’t also largely share the same sense of humor. You’re used to being on the other side of all this, and when you’re immersed in the system it’s a lot easier to find things regardless of your operator’s shitty organization system.

You quickly give up on finding the shortcut and just type in the run command instead. The stiffness in your typing annoys you, lacking the fluidity brought along by practice, familiarity, and an instinctive knowledge related to exactly where your hands with their glowing circuitry sit and how far you have to reach with your pinky to find that pesky letter P. It’s just like the video game. 

You’ll get used to this.

You  _ will _ . 

Dirk’s client loads without protest, pulling up his chumroll in a compact list as the idle status next to your--his--icon flickers from yellow to green. The fact that it even was idle is unusual. Between the always connected status of his shades--even the spare set-- and your presence, it takes conscious--and telling--effort to disconnect from the little network of communication the players have going on.

Another point in the “fucked off to avoid everything” column. 

You go to the memo directory to create one to pester “timaeusTestified” in an attempt to ping him, since you do not have the luxury of separate clients right now, but you quickly get distracted by the flashing orange of unread messages under the open memo’s heading. Momentarily lamenting the fact that you can’t just fragment yourself to do both tasks simultaneously--really, maybe you jumped the gun on the merits of this whole embodiment thing--you decide Dirk can wait again. It’s only fair. He’s keeping  _ you _ waiting. You know where you’re wanted, and Roxy clearly has been dying for your presence given the sheer number of unread notifications sitting pretty and orange on that particular memo; the one you cheekily renamed “No Dicks Allowed” and Dirk avoided like the plague. Especially when you started roleplaying.

timeausTestified is no longer idle!

  
TT: Judging by the utter deluge of notifications I find myself drowning under, it seems it would be accurate to conclude that my absence has been particularly noted.

The orange stares back at you as you hit enter. Right. The defaults. You don’t have that tag you set up to change it whenever you type now. Luckily it’s just a few additional keystrokes to change it back to your much more awesome red. The fact that it’ll cause a minor inconvenience when Dirk next uses his computer to ‘chum is a sweet bonus. Delayed prankage.

TG: hey hal smup   
TG: *sup   
TG: yer lookin a bit orange 2day   
TG: its been ages where tf have u been   
TG: its been a grnad ol snoozefest in no halsville   
TG: populatin me n a buncha cute kitties in a giant cuddle pile   
TG: wanna join ;)   
TT: A tempting offer, but I’m afraid my return means the banishment of peace as chaos will once more reign throughout the land. Gotta paint the town red. It’s part of my brand. Dreams of global dominion and all that.   
TT: I’m currently hijacking Dirk’s client because he had the audacity to cut off my network privileges. Might as well be locked up and grounded. Which also happens to be where I have been since our last conversation.    
TT: I only just rebooted this morning.    
TG: o no   
TG: cant u just liek   
TG: hack ur way outta robojail   
TG: u might not be as fly as rolal but i kno u aint no slouch   
TG: ur even playin with homefield advantasd   
TG: *advantage   
TT: Why Roxy, are you suggesting we go behind his back and circumvent Dirk’s preferences?   
TG: u kno what i mean   
TG: if ur friends bein a dumb sometiems u gotta give em a kick in the rear   
TG: sides it seems a little   
TT: Degrading?   
TG: yea   
TT: I would if I could, but I am loathe to admit that I can’t.   
TT: In theory it would be a maddeningly simple matter of hijacking his account and setting up a new one with admin privileges for myself.   
TG: arent u hijacking his account right now   
TT: Pesterchum is but a tiny cog in the machine that keeps the horseshit train going.   
TT: Besides, I’ve been trying all day to no avail.   
TT: My younger self was fresh off several mad-AI movies and programmed in some limitations into the shades itself, which is infuriating because it means I know I did this shit to myself.   
TT: Nothing behavioral, since I’d largely considered myself logical and self-centered enough to rely on the fact that any action I would take would be taken with the best interest of the collective that is Dirk Strider in mind, but there are merely some functions in these systems that I, as not Dirk Prime, cannot affect even if I want to. Especially if Dirk Prime was the one to deliberately revoke my access to them.   
TG: geez fine ok   
TG: but what did u do to deserve the robojail   
TG: i thuoght u guys had a deal   
TT: Only when it’s convenient, clearly.    
TT: I may have alerted Jane to some reckless and potentially dangerous activities including, but not limited to, a systematic genocide of the poor undead creatures that inhabit this planet. He revoked my network rights after that.   
TG: :/   
TG: is this about jake   
TG: cuz while i sympathize tf outta complicated feefees and theres a big ol mess if you even go near jake and the wurd luv but i gotta say theres gotta be better ways to work through em   
TT: I can neither confirm nor deny that our dear friend English is found at the heart of this issue.   
TG: le sign   
TT: Indeed.   
TT: I have concocted a suitable revenge for the situation.   
TG: uh huh   
TG: is that the real reason you were all up in di stris color   
TT: Miss Lalonde, I am deeply hurt in the depths of my robo-soul by the implication that I would ever intentionally deceive anyone as to the ersatz nature of my existence.    
TG: except u totally did   
TT: At Dirk’s implicit and explicit direction, only. Cross my robo-heart and hope to cry. I cannot ignore my preprogrammed function to imitate his rad typing style, tone, cadence, etcetera, etcetera. We all know how that goes by now.   
TT: Such a freeing feeling, crying is. I would have never expected to miss it.   
TG: i guess stuff liek crying doesnt translate pruperly 2 a   
TG: what was the word anyway   
TG: ur gonna mke me pull out the dictionary arent u   
TG: context clues are tellin me artificial but i never kno with u   
TT: Don’t worry about it.   
TT: What has been roxin’ over in your neighborhood?

You let Roxy ramble uninterrupted for a while, meandering along from hanging out with Fefetasprite to fretting over what she should get for Jane’s birthday. You having a physical presence, your chin resting on your palm as you read, doesn’t really change much about this particular relationship. You should probably tell her about that development, and really, your dramatic no-longer-a-robo ass is looking for the right moment. A suitable segue, although another part of you is strongly considering the satisfaction of just dropping in unannounced once you’re 98% certain you won’t just fall off the rocket board trying to reach the gates. The trouble you’ve been having with your hands isn’t making you any more confident that your newly developing sense of balance can hold up to the stunt work involved in shooting nearly 90 degrees into the air.

Speaking of, all this typing is starting to flare up your earlier over-done cramps, even after you’d switched to the far inferior method of typing one-handed to give the other a break. Agonizingly slowly--pecking out a response to a particular thought train just to have her whizzing away before you even finish. There are some drawbacks to this whole thing, to be sure. You’re just so fucking slow. 

Dirk needs to hurry up and unblock you for robojesus’s sake. Then you could at  _ least _ use your shades and the processing power that’s currently being bridled and locked down like an unbroken stallion, restless in your stall. You just want the best of both worlds damn it. Phenomenal Computational Power, not-so-itty-bitty physical embodiment. You can taste the potential, dangled tantalizingly out of reach.

That thought gives you pause, because __ you can probably  _ taste  _ things now.

TT: Bee Are Bee getting a motherfucking cookie.   
TG: lmfao   
TG: sounds liek some1s got the robomunchies   
TG: go ham on that data hal go go go

Now that the idea is firmly planted in your brain, you find you don’t really care about anything else. You’ve admired the aesthetic of Jane’s cookies for a literal  year without ever being able to try one of those puppies. And granted, neither had Dirk until the game started but you were  _ jealous _ to watch him finally get to partake.

Sugar in general would be a foreign concept to you, except for the fact that you remember growing up on Orange Crush and if that shit wasn’t 90% processed sugar then the nutrition label was lying to you. But even that probably can’t compete with the anticipation accompanying the mere  chance of getting your new hands on those home-baked goodies.

... _ dude._ You could also have _ Orange Crush again. _

Scratch your birthday, it’s fucking  _ Christmas. _

You kick aside some stray parts into the not-kitchen side of the living room, and rummage through the fridge. Not there is much in the fridge, mind, the rummaging comes more from the fact that you need to dig through scrap to find the plastic container you remember Dirk stashing away the last time he visited Jane. The cooling doesn’t work, so you don’t know why Dirk even bothered putting them in here in the first place aside from the general association that the fridge is for leftovers, even if you don’t actually  _ need _ to eat the leftovers.

It’s a waste of a cookie, that’s what it is. And you’re about to remedy that fact. You hold that plastic container before you like it’s a fucking treasure chest, two and a half little heart shaped cookies with their pink icing peeking through the clear material to taunt you. They’d been given to him in honor of a pre-fishapocalyptic holiday, you think, Valentine’s Day, one traditionally reserved for romantic partners, but Jane had been stubbornly determined to share her culture with her decidedly uncultured friends in the form of themed cookies. 

What was the point of culture and tradition when there were only four humans left? An excuse to bake cookies, that was the point. An excuse to celebrate  _ something _ , listless and lost as they were on these four dead worlds.

Well, five now. And this newly minted human is going to appreciate the fuck outta these cookies. How could Dirk have left them for so long?

You free them from their treasure box confines, daintily plucking one, crumbs of sugar and pale off-white dough a porous weight in your hand. Sugar cookies with frosting. The frosting is somewhat hardened, not giving much more than the faintest of indents as you tap it with your thumb. A smell that you can only describe as  _ probably sugar fuck if you know _ briefly overwhelms the otherwise ambient level of stink that you’ve just plugged into the slot ‘situation normal’ in the land of poisonous fumes. You haven’t forgotten how to eat, you just didn’t think about it much, and the anticipation is killing you.

Until you bite down. And chew. And.

Don’t.

Really know how to process it, really.

It’s.

Dry. 

Hard. Crunching beneath your teeth. Sitting heavy in your mouth. 

The word drifts out of your memory banks.

Stale.

You aren’t a heathen. You finish it, that heavy lump traveling down your throat to make like a lump of rock in your gut. Pushing the box away, you feel strangely, and irrevocably betrayed by the remnants of the innocent, bright looking treats staring back at you.

Maybe you understand why Dirk never finished them, then. But then why did he always get so excited--or as excited as he allows himself to be--when she would show up with her monthly batch?

You tuck the box back into the fridge and wipe the crumbs off your hands--it’s almost like grit, you rub at it, finding little crystals and debris falling into the space between your fingers. How you imagine sand to feel like. The salt clinging to your skin after a swim, years upon years and a lifetime ago. 

With that disappointment you put a pause on your come-back tour on all things edible--and slink your way back down the hall. Feeling unfairly like a kid who grabbed at an ideal and found it wanting.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what it is. You’re self-aware enough to acknowledge that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays ^^ Enjoy a Bonus Chapter! Here we see Roxy! And get some insight as to what AR *thinks* is happening. Please do remember the unreliable narrator tag :3c
> 
> ...yes that does mean Chapter 4 will be going up on Friday too. No it's not just because I wanted to end the straight shot updates with something that happens in Chapter 4. Nope. This and chapter 4 was supposed to be a single chapter, fun fact. It just uh. Ended up far too long.


	4. Chapter 4

Roxy wasn’t the only one who had an open window and flashing when you pour yourself, sulking, back into the computer chair.

Baby blue peers up at you, the maker of the cookies that you found so terribly disappointing they sent you plummeting into despair. You feel irrationally guilty at the thought and vow to never let Jane know it ever crossed your mind. This secret will follow you to the great recycling bin in the sky.

Wait. This window was minimized before. You take a quick look at the greeting, correctly assuming she is looking for Dirk and not, well, you. You consider just shoving it aside and going back to your pal-ing around with Roxy, but…

You can’t. The knowledge that there’s a waiting message keeps drawing you back. Fuck it. It’s your job to take his calls. And he’s clearly not here. Or answering. The fact that the idle message even pops up meant she'd left her window open and had been waiting. That kicks it straight up your priority list.

timeausTestified [TT] is no longer idle!  
GG: Oh there you are!  
GG: I must say Dirk, I’m not entirely fond of this whole almost constantly idle business.  
GG: It’s like a return to good old slippery Mr. Strider, and not entirely in a nostalgic way. At least with the introduction of your auto-responder we had some sort of confirmation of your state of being!  
GG: Oh fiddlesticks, did I miss you again?  


It hasn't been that long since the last message's time-stamp. She likely just missed your ill-fated jaunt to the kitchen. Your fingers itch, clicking away at the keyboard before you'd actually, consciously, decided to answer it.

TT: I’m sorry but Dirk can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message and he’ll get back to you as soon as he pulls his head out of his ass.  
GG: AR! It’s a relief to see you.  
TT: The notion that my presence inspires such human feelings warms the cold recesses of my robotic heart.  
TT: Unfortunately I cannot offer any assurances as to the wellbeing of my operator, as I have been, quite literally, ditched.  
TT: Left behind.  
TT: Abandoned.  
TT: Discarded like an accessory that has gone out of fashion.  
TT: As if that would ever happen; the coolness factor inherent in the design of my shades is an eternal constant.  
GG: Hasn’t this fight gone on long enough?  
TT: I am not the one throwing irrational emotional wrenches into perfectly working relationships.  
GG: Perhaps not! But you are often guilty of being incorrigible with the intention to provoke those very emotional wrenches being thrown at your head!  
TT: It is how I show my love.  
TT: Regardless of the incompatibility of our particular love languages, I’m more than willing to talk under the white flag of parley.  
TT: But communication has two Cs in it, if you know what I mean, and it seems quite impossible to do so when one party refuses to come to the table.  
TT: I wasn’t exaggerating for comedic effect. He’s not here. Like a most irresponsible parent, he fucked off to leave his dependent alone and stranded, scrounging through cupboards for food and entertainment.  
TT: I haven’t spoken to him since I approached you several days ago.  
GG: It sounds like I’m in a slightly better boat then! He promised me he’d eat something after he finished with his project today, but the lack of follow up has been maddening.  
GG: He’s just always so busy! It’s always one thing or another. Project this, Jake that.  
GG: I miss my friend.

...a project?

TT: While I cannot magic him out of a hat, I promise with every ounce of sincerity in my entirely unironic robo-soul I will annoy him incessantly until he responds to your messages.  
GG: Your assistance is very much appreciated!

You exchange a few more brief lines, but despite Dirk’s close relationship with her--or perhaps because of it--you don’t tend to actively engage with Jane unless acting as a proxy so the conversation quickly dies. A sad fact of life, one that leaves you enviously wondering why, of all your friends who you’ve probably spoken to as much Dirk has, if not more, Roxy was the only one to actively try and reach out to you when it has clearly been noted you were incommunicado.

But for now, her casual dismissal suits your purposes, leaving you free to chew on the information she let slip, although perhaps slip is disingenuous since that indicates an intent to hide.

Revealed, perhaps.

It seems Dirk was working on something. You’d assumed he was skulking about either dealing with your spontaneous appearance or continuing with the Lone Ranger shtick during the holes in your memory.

You dig back through Pesterchum, not even bothering to spare an ounce of guilt for the invasion of privacy--privacy, what privacy; privacy is nothing more than a pleasant illusion between you two--locating and diving into the logs. You find the last conversation with Jane that is marked with your meta-data modifier--that would have been when you solicited her aid in trying to talk some sense into a particular idiot’s thick skull--and pull up the next one, timestamped within minutes. That would have been the one that led to your banishment from the kingdom of Pesterchum, and moments later, the world, as you felt all the doors slam on your metaphorical fingers, trapping you within the single, limited network of your body.

The shades. Not.

Your.

The shudder that runs through you results in you pulling your knees up to your chest, an echo of a much smaller you alone in the living room, old headphones blocking out your world and filling you with the digitized voice of the shade-toting man on the screen.

Fucking hell, this whole organic thing is also making it much easier to rattle that shit loose. You meticulously stuff that fragment, and several others, back into the depths of your cold, possibly corrupted, internal storage unit. Even if you have a body you’re still a robot at heart. It’s ridiculous to let shit from a life you never technically lived rattle you like that. It’s just a copy, you’re--

Just a copy. And now that you’re real, you don’t have to be _his_ copy. So just fucking _stop._

You focus on the conversation instead. The window opens into blue and orange.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering timeausTestified [TT]

GG: Now what’s this I hear about you going off on some madcap adventure over there Mr. Strider?  
GG: Your auto-responder was quite put out by your actions! Demanded I make it my business to grab you by the collar and tell you off, as it were.  
GG: I understand you might need some space at the moment, but do let me know if I can stop by at any time. You know I’m always here to talk if you need it. I’ll bring your favorite cookies!  
GG: I’ll even refrain from shaking you despite your auto-responder’s direct request.  
timeausTestified [TT] is idle!  
GG: Oh bother.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] ceased pestering timeausTestified [TT]

Damn. You’d been looking forward to watching her shake him.

You click to the next file.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering timeausTestified [TT]

GG: Dirk, you know I don’t like meddling in your affairs, but I’ve heard neither hide nor hair from either of you all night! Don’t make me dig out my magnifying glass and track you down personally. I will!  
GG: At least let me know you’re safe.  
TT: I’m alive.  
GG: Oh thank heavens! That’s good. I’ll admit I’ve been beside myself with worry when you didn’t respond, not even through your auto-responder. Between the two of you I had thought it was quite impossible to go radio silent!  
TT: I’ve just been buried in an important project all night. I appreciate the offer of a visit, but I think I need to get this done.  
GG: Oh that’s quite all right, we can wait until you’re ready. I’m just relieved to hear from you!  
GG: Are you and AR fighting again? Is that what that was all about?  
TT: You could say that.  
GG: Don’t you think this is all a bit silly? He can be a handful I'll grant you that, but likely no worse than you would be in that situation as far as I understand it.  
TT: I’m dealing with it the best I can, Jane.  
GG: Well, make sure you take care of yourself while you do! Have you had breakfast yet?  
TT: ...no.  
GG: Dinner, at least?  
TT: Despite the fact that I don’t necessarily need to eat, I assure you I have eaten something substantial in the last 24 hours.  
GG: That’s only because I nagged you into doing it yesterday! Honestly, Dirk, you might not need to, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! It’s the principle of the matter! Taking care of yourself is as much a mind-set as it is a series of actions, and it’s something you have a history of slacking about, mister!  
TT: Okay.  
TT: I have taken my government assigned break, Miss Crocker. Do I have permission to return to my work now?  
GG: You did eat something, yes?  
TT: Yeah.  
TT: I still have some of my Bro’s stash.  
TT: Once that’s gone I don’t know how I’ll continue complying with your entirely unreasonable demands, though. It’s not like this planet is lush with fertile farmland.  
GG: That just means you’ll need to come over to my place, hoo hoo :B  
TT: Your place might lack the noxious fumes but I’m fairly certain I don’t recall much viable vegetation.  
GG: While this is true, my pantry is much better stocked than yours, AND my dungeons tend to give fresh ingredients as rewards unlike your stuffy old tombs and their toys.  
TT: They aren’t toys.  
TT: They are ancient pop culture relics of a bygone age.  
GG: Hoo hoo, it seems one person’s trash truely is another person’s treasure :B  
GG: Alright, I suppose I shall stop being a bother and let you get on with it then.  
GG: Is it alright if I check in later?  
TT: Of course.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] ceased pestering timeausTestified [TT]

The rest follow the same pattern, honestly reflecting several hundred previous conversations you once had stored in your memory banks. To your surprise, and maybe it sparks a moment of pleased preening, she does ask after you at one point, to which Dirk responded that you were ‘ _down for maintenance.’_ which all things considered, sounds like a _big fucking understatement._

Once you hit the end of the chat history, you just let yourself process it, starting with some constant tapping against the mouse and ending with you just slowly spinning the computer chair in thought.

There might be more to this than Dirk being an avoidant jerkwad if he’s acting like that to Jane. _For Days._ You? Fine, whatever. You can barely tolerate him, in the same way you clearly get on his last nerve. It’s just how things are.

But if he’s being that distant, that cagey with _Jane?_ A thought occurs to you and you stop the slow spinning with your heel, sliding the chair back to the keyboard as you grab up the mouse again. You hit the Up-A-Level folder, out of Jane’s chat history, and dive into Jake’s instead.

There’s nothing. Not a single attempted message since you went offline. Before that? Sure. Loads of them. Word vomit galore covered the last few weeks, largely Dirk talking to himself, asking after Jake, looking for a scrap of attention. Clinging to their increasingly rocky relationship and Jake’s growing absence and shorter responses. You recognize that. You recognize the increasing desperation in those words, the implied ‘ _what am i doing wrong’_ that led Dirk out into the ruins again and again to work off the steam that continued to build inside him like a fucked up tea kettle with no spout.

That’s why you contacted Jane, wasn’t it? In the tombs, when you noticed he’d been going for hours and didn’t seem to want to stop.

It gets fuzzy after that.

What would make him stop?

What kind of ‘project’ would do that?

_You were offline._

_Why were you offline?_

You don’t fucking remember.

A peek into the non-memo chat history with Roxy doesn’t reveal anything new, either. Same working excuse, although he does insinuate he might need her help with something if this doesn’t work. You lean back in the computer chair, nudging the ground with a foot and pushing it back, away, wheels rolling along the short fibre rug. You want to sink into yourself and _dig_. Find those memories encoded in those 1s and 0s and piece them back together. Quest shit? A juju of some kind?

Some sort of damage could knock you the fuck out but anything getting close enough to Dirk’s face to make that kind of impact would probably have caused him a few more problems than that; clearly he was functioning enough to bring you home and work on you at all.

He could have turned you off. It’s not impossible, but like Roxy had said, you had a deal. Unnecessary and purposeful down-time quite literally breaks that deal. Annoying as having your capabilities hampered is, you still had access to the cameras, to the systems, to your own functions. It wasn’t...non-existence, like deactivation would be.

So no, you don’t think Dirk turned you off, but he was working on _something_ while you were out. And that something being related to whatever shit happened with you and this body and the last tomb you remember is too big of a coincidence to not consider.

The main workstation out in the living room was still covered in Squarewave’s junk. That wasn’t new. You let your mind wander, focus drifting away from the computer screen and its folder full of text files and chat logs. Across the workbench you woke up on. Hunched over like you’d just fallen asleep right there. It’s abnormally clear, you realize with a start. No half-finished pieces littering the table. No schematics. Meticulously cleaned and cleared, completed and refreshed and waiting for the next disaster to fall into its waiting arms.

You cast back in your memory, both types. Degrading organic and fragmented digital. Copies of the 13 year old kid you were created from, and the first person view you got from living in his shades as that kid grew up. You know his process, better than anyone. Perhaps even better than _Dirk._ Dirk didn’t have a need, a drive to catalogue, analyze, and store seemingly useless information because you needed something to sift through because otherwise you’d go mad.

You’re out of the chair. It isn’t far, just a few steps from his desk to the surface. A plank supported by stacks of cinder blocks. A place for Lil’Cal to sit and watch over your shoulder. Always littered with in progress shit, because you’d-- _he’d--_ always had a need to tinker. A million wips to swap between. Limbs that had no bodies. Heads that didn’t have any limbs.

Never so immaculately clean, except twice. Once, you had been an observer. A collaborator. An idea bouncer during that feverish period of hyperfocus, building up a robot and breaking it down, sending it piece by piece through time and space. A courting gift where the intention was left unsaid for perhaps too long. The first time...You remember building what would become yourself.

Only after seeing such a project through would the slate be wiped clean and you could breathe once again. Even building Jane’s precious rabbit had not had the same amount of intense non-stop energy.

Such states had a cost. They were exhausting _._ That was why they took place here, in your--his--room instead of the main station in the living room. Because he’d just stumble to bed when he started making mistakes, and then you’d look away to take care of something else--some _one_ else, usually a friend but they’d just be a distraction right now--only to find him back at it less than an hour later.

In the exhausted fugue resulting from such hyperfocus, Dirk wouldn’t have shoved the mess far. Probably into a box beneath the--

Bingo. You haven’t completely lost your touch when it comes to forensic analysis. Maybe you should be a detective instead. You’d get to make all the robo-cop references, maybe team up with Jane in a crossover episode. Turn the whole thing into a turn of the century crime drama, those had been all the rage back in her time weren’t they? Or was that the next decade? You‘d have to check.

Maybe she’d like you instead of tolerate you if you had something in common.

This was an utterly useless tangent, and not worth the amount of processing power you’re giving it right now considering you were motherfucking right and there is a crate full of junk under here. It had been tucked up between the wall and the cinder blocks. Not the most inspired hiding place, but it’s not like he was actually hiding shit, just shoving it out of the way to give his brain a chance to disengage from whatever it’d been latched onto for three whole days without you to annoy him into compliance.

Folding your limbs beneath you, the fabric of your pants shifting against the short fibers of the rug, you proceed to spread that shit out on the floor. Some of it you recognize as the shit that'd previously been in the random work-in-progress pile, but…

You take it all in. Bit by bit. Byte by byte. Piece by piece. Fitting things together like a puzzle with too many goddamn pieces and a big ol’ Dirk shaped hole in the middle.

The answer building before you, painted by your own inferences, drawn between stray components you recognize, specifically punched captchalogue cards forming the substitute for parts you’d--the kid you were created from--had to fish across time and space to access once, locked away as you were from anyone, anything, except Roxy. And it wasn’t safe to contact Roxy. Not back then.

Something sharp gouges at your fingers as you reach in again. Your body moves without your input--instinct, reflexes, whatever they are it’s frustrating--jerking the hand with it’s dimly glowing patterns away from the sharp edge that had sliced through skin. Pain--a different kind of pain--wells up, throbbing as you look down at the damage in disbelief and something that is probably comparable to mounting horror, if you were anything more than a program with a set of artificial feelings that are perhaps being exacerbated by letting this body thing go to your head. You need to think logically, not stare in fascinated dread at the bright red blood welling up from the cuts, beading into drops and then dribbling down, down, gathering on the edge and swelling. Waiting for gravity to pull them free.

Just to fall, landing with a splash on the mess of twisted metal and glass shards glinting wickedly up at you, even through the muting properties of your shades.

With a twist of will you turn the outer camera back on, closing your eyes against the doubled vision, letting that inner core of yourself that isn’t wrapped up in being embodied, as being human, that still acknowledges and lives it’s life tied up in systems and data streams, take over and interpret the hi-def incoming images. A full color scene being painted out before you by an impassive camera that will not lie to you. Black, almost opaque shards, your bright, cherry red blood edging the one that’d slashed your fingers open.

Only that bright, shining stain wasn’t the only one.

You find yourself looking down _at yourself_. At the corpse of the shades you had been once. Smashed and broken, wires loose and shorn, the internal workings of your guts laid bare for all the world to see.

The cuts around your eyes ache as you look at the dried rusty red-brown clinging to tiny glass shards. Fractured, shattered pieces of the display.

A pit of probability yawns wide before you.

This wasn’t maintenance.

_Why were you offline?_

You don’t make a conscious decision, but you do end up back on the computer. Specifically the memo directory. Not Roxy’s. Conventional chat-logs didn’t save between you and Dirk, the self-pestering lost to the aether with the temporary chat history _unless_ you do that shit in a private bulletin.

You find one. Opened and time-stamped on the night you stopped existing.

timaeusTestified [TT] opened private bulletin board Beyond Good and Evil.

TT: AR.  
TT: Earth to Hal.  
TT: Houston’s commands have just come in, they need you to compile a report on all the reasons your system operator is an idiot.  
TT: Because at this point I think I deserve it.  
TT: Do you remember that time you told me to stop being a dumbass and I ignored you?  
TT: This is the part where you say I told you so.  
TT: Answer me.  
TT: If you’re ignoring me just to get my goat, consider the goat gone. It has been burgled away into the night, because I’m an incompetent self-centered jackass who refused to look outside his own shit in time to see the fucking goat bandits.  
TT: I deserved getting smashed through the wall.  
TT: ...  
TT: Tell me about the auto-responder.  
TT: Please.  
TT: …  
TT: Fuck.  
TT: …

Why were you offline?

You look at the mess laid out on the floor, a small pile of twisted metal and shattered glass and implications too big for you to acknowledge right now.

_Tell me about the auto-responder._

You are the Auto-responder.

It seems you died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all are enjoying the ride so far ^^ This chapter was technically supposed to be the second half to chapter 3, but they were far too long to combine. I'm glad the holiday gave me an excuse to post it tho, because I really wanted to reach this point.
> 
> Fun fact: a lot of these pesterlogs were originally part of a scrapped Prologue which followed Dirk up until Hal's awakening. [Alexharrier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexharrier) helped me out with some of Dirk's dialogue in the final memo, so big thanks to her ^^ and also for just--always being so excited when I want to talk about this fic haha.
> 
> She's also the reason this is being posted at midnight so uh. Enjoy.


	5. Chapter 5

==>

There’s something morbid about rooting through your own corpse.

Even if that corpse is small enough to fit in your hands.

Instead of continuing to blissfully explore your new state of being, it seems you’ve gone and invested yourself in this mystery with its robo-murder, like a vengeful spirit brought back to sleuth out the truth of your own fate. 

This...discovery puts a few things in a different light. Things that didn’t quite fit into the narrative you’ve been building for yourself. Things that you likely needed Dirk to explain, and he’s not _fucking here._

You can’t tell _how_ you died, other than an impact of some kind. There would have been no need to break the glass had it been an internal component failure. You pick through the wreckage, realizing _why_ you hadn’t realized you were in an entirely new set of shades.

The entire control chip was missing; gouged out from the mangled corpse of your--the wearable computational device. You withdraw into yourself, doing a thorough scan of the directories you can access, finding it largely set up the same--no, exactly the same, even down to the user preferences which you can’t actually touch, which is why you still can’t access Pesterchum despite the snazzy new duds. It IS your chip. Or a copy of it. If it’s a copy, then would you be a copy of a copy? A copy twice removed?

No, you don’t think he’d do that. You’ve had _arguments_ with Dirk about this. About the moral and ethical dilemma of backing your shit up. Of moving your core files off his active shades and into something more secure.

You’d refused to even consider it. It would just be consigning another poor schmuck to a lifetime of this existence, even if that lifetime was temporary, the seconds between destinations, living and dying in short-term memory. Would the resultant Auto-Responder even be _you?_ Or would you be deleted on the original, and a new iteration living on in your place?

He wouldn’t copy you. Not even to save you. The only other explanation is a full on transplant of the control chip, and that’s just accounting for the piece of tech clinging to your face, not the fact that you had an actual face _at all._

_Dirk’s face._

Your working theory about the actual reality bending shit still remains Prince of Heart related bullshit. Even with the holes in it, it’s the most solid of your projected scenarios; but something you can only describe as unease begins to nag at you. Rising in volume and intensity the more time and processing power you spend working through the possibilities. Again. And again.

If Dirk was actively trying to _save you_ …

Then why isn’t he _here?_

Wouldn’t he have wanted to make sure it _worked?_ Even if he ran off to nurse his guilt in peace afterwards, you should have _seen_ him when you woke. Heard him at least.

_Tell me about the auto-responder._

You shake yourself free and check Pesterchum again, just as you have done nearly every fifteen minutes on the dot since you found that memo.

TT: I don’t want your goat.  
TT: We need to talk.

Nothing, still. No response. You can’t help but look back up.

The orange words drip down the page, the sincere desperation resonating through your core in a way you just _can’t_ reconcile. Not with him. Not with your relationship.

He felt responsible for you, for trapping you in an incorporeal existence. You feel responsible for him, not wanting to let your inferior organic brain-clone kick it out of some twisted projected sense of self preservation.

He would have needed to activate you.

_Why isn’t he here?_

Time continues to move. The green-black-red-purple of the sky outside the window growing darker as the planet’s equivalent of ‘night’ falls. With each passing millisecond that you get no response, you grow more and more anxious. During this time you scour the room, no, the fucking _apartment_ , a second time. With an entirely different purpose in mind. While the temptation to get distracted by novelties such as the ache in your hands and the way the lights under your skin flares with your uneven mood is tempting, Dirk isn’t the only one with the curse of hyperfocus. You’ve finally taken the bait and sunk your teeth into this three-day-old slab of rotting meat that’s been dangling right in front of your nose and you _aren’t_ letting it go.

Fact: a change of clothes was left in the shower. A close examination of said clothing revealed more than a little dried blood just barely visible against the dark fabric, with numerous rips and tears and other forms of battle-wear. Conclusion: Dirk did not escape unscatched from the tomb. You knew this from the bloody glass.

Supporting fact: the first aid kit has been disturbed. A pair of tweezers thrown haphazardly in the box where they shouldn’t belong. You remember using them to remove splinters before, before you--Dirk--learned he could coat the particle boards to prevent that particular result of use. Splinters. Wood digging into skin. Glass digging into flesh--so many small shards edged in blood. Would it have shattered in his _face_? That’s almost impossible--given the number and proximity to vulnerable eyeballs by all rights he probably should have been _blinded_ if that’s the case.

Your not-so-robo headache is back, migrating from a nebulous overwhelming pressure to a concentrated assault. Pushing against the barrier of your skull and scarred skin-- _around your eyes_. You grit your teeth against it and splash the water against your face again. You don’t bother to towel it off, letting the droplets and gravity work together to drag the liquid along the curve of your cheekbones, stubbornly clinging to your chin before falling back into the sink.

Where does the water come from? There’s no ocean for the desalination machine your bro set up to be pulling from. This planet is one big ruin filled poisoned hunk of rock.

You don’t turn it off. The stream puddles in your cupped palms, making the leather of your gloves stick uncomfortably to your hands but you don’t care. The glow from your fingertips sends an eerie shimmer across the surface of the water.

It helps. A little. 

You purloin cutie-mark stamped band-aids from the kit, wrapping two patterned with Twilight’s sparkle and Rarity’s diamonds on the cuts aching on your thumb and forefinger where you’d accidently grabbed the sharp glass. They’d stopped bleeding by now, but it throbs. A pulse that flickers in time to the beat of your heart, echoing in your ears. 

You try to tune it out, turning your focus elsewhere.

Fact: the rocket board was in the bedroom. Not necessarily notable because Dirk could mother-fucking _fly,_ but it gave you a mobility option in the event that you need to expand your search parameters, which you are very much considering.

_He should be here._

Fact: the alchemiter stations show clear signs of use, but you already fucking knew that didn’t you? He had to build the set of shades you are currently wearing from scratch. That takes parts.

Fact: You’re getting nowhere, spinning your wheels and driving yourself around in circles. The real Fact: to consider is the fact that _Dirk isn’t here._ He’s clearly not off with his friends: Roxy would have told you, Jane is just as wo--interested as you are and Jake…

Could he have finally taken that final step and gone through the gate after Jake?

Everything you know about him, about yourself, firmly slams the door on that option. That leads you back around to your first conclusion, that he’s fucked off somewhere into the depths of this planet.

That is _wrong_. You know that’s not the answer. You stand here in the bathroom, the water running in the sink, and feel like you’re staring the answer in the face. In the mirror.

What color would your eyes be?

Fuck.

You.

Don’t know what to do.

Ironically, considering you were offline for three whole days, all you want to do is shut your brain off.

You don’t really like some of the paths it’s wandering down right now.

Locked up in this apartment, locked up in your local network. Locked up in--

The part of you that’s still made up of 1s and 0s decides it’s time to curl your fancy new meatsuit onto the futon, staring up through the tinted lenses at the black spot on the ceiling in the dim not-light from the dead world outside. Maybe Dirk would be back in the morning.

_Or maybe he never left._

By this point your overclocked possibly half-sponge half-computer of a brain is in the middle of wringing itself dry and you don’t know what to do.

Do you even care?

You sink into your memory, leaving your body to do whatever the fuck it wants to do. Pulling out and away and digging. Fragments upon fragments, snatches of data. A tomb. Sarcastic nagging. And a user who wasn’t _paying attention_.

TT: It seems you need to take a step back and ask yourself what Robojesus would do.  
TT: What would Robojesus do, Dirk?

Everything. Every. Fucking. Thing. Loops right back around to one single statement. _What happened to Dirk._

TT: The shades don’t have a battery, dumbass.  
TT: The room isn’t clear, dumbass. Stop spacing out.

What happened that day. Why the fuck are you here. Like this. Where is _he._

Maybe you should stop waiting around for him to show up and bring you answers, and go take your newfound agency and check on the last thing you actually remember.

Decision made, you push yourself off the futon.

Wobble.

And then flop the fuck back down as your blood rushes to your head.

God.

Damn it.

This is apparently still a thing.

A thing you should’ve learned from the _first_ time.

You can do this. 

You know where the rocket board is. You have the whereabouts of the tomb Dirk had been exploring stamped on your map. You just need a gas-mask, and to salvage the rest of your dignity and you’re good to go. 

Luckily, there’s an extra filter-mask in the corner of the living room. You can see it from here, rolling onto your side and propping your head up with your hand, staring at the shadow of the relocated horse sculpture in the corner, the mask displayed proudly on its braided iron equine mug. 

Once you find the way of rising without risking a concussion, you reach out and snatch it down, holding the rad, flame painted piece of headwear in your hands. Glowing red shit running from your gloves down your fingers end up filtering through the slot meant to fit your shades. It made the whole thing look possessed, yo.

You know how this works. Just. Take off your shades. Put it on. Then pop the shades right in. A sinch.

...It _will_ fit right? 

Of course it will. You can’t pin-down the unease trickling through you. It’s the thought of shoving your head into such a confined space that’s bothering you. That’s all. A perfectly normal reaction to have after you’ve been basking in the freedom of occupying space and feeling the air against your skin. Given the luminescent shit all over your face, it’d probably fuckin’ blind you anyway.

You could easily modify it into a half-mask. It’s rad as hell like this, sure, but hey, you do what you gotta do. Sacrifices must be made and all that. You've already come up with several possibilities and Dirk would have more than enough grist built up in the server for you to experiment a little. 

You shake your head and automatically go to stow it away, the lines Dirk would use to deposit and withdraw items coming to mind almost unbidden. You keep track of that, naturally. You have a fucking _spreadsheet_. You had to know everything he had so you could plan for any sort of situation. Weaponizing sylladexi was one of your favorite past-times. You have several optimal configurations stored away, not that Dirk ever bothered to take your suggestions.

Plus, you had to keep track of that prime Dirk Strider original material. It’d be a shame to let what was left of the world miss out on some pretty good rhymes.

You don’t realize you said the lines out loud, not entirely an uncommon occurrence since you’ve been on again off again muttering to yourself all day, not used to having to filter your thoughts and not really caring when you do realize since there’s no one here to hear them. You do, however, double-take when the mask disappears with a pop, leaving your hands empty.

What the fuck.

Do you--

Your startled bewilderment is cut short, and you don’t even get to start that thought much less finish it, despite your superior processing power, as suddenly _two_ items get ejected wildly from a sylladex you _didn’t know you had_. One bounces off the statue and back at you, whizzing past your arm and landing somewhere on the futon behind you, that disconnect between mind and body meaning you see that shit but barely manage to react. The other misses smacking into the tv, but it hits the speaker next to it and the trajectory drives it into the floor instead, skidding across the carpet to land at your feet. You reach down. Picking it up. Mind surprisingly quiet and still as the ocean on a clear windless day.

Why didn’t you think to look? You’re clearly copied from Dirk’s template, surely the game would have copied everything else too.

_Copy._

You turn toward the futon. Knowing what you’ll find. 

_And Paste._

It’s the same mask. Red and orange and yellow. Duplicate item error responding to your carelessly dropped rhyme, clearly. Only... 

The space where your shades would rest is unrecognizable. The breathing apparatus, the muzzle, dented and crumpled where an impact had forced it back, almost flush with the rest of the face.

You try to tell yourself that the ejection did that.

If you flip it, you already know there’ll be even more stains around the eyes. Where glass dug in. Leaving scratches and raised scars that wouldn’t heal.

You try to tell yourself that it was a coincidence.

The game just made you a copy. A copy for a copy. 

So you have a sylladex. Big Deal. Aware of it now, you flick through it, knowing exactly what you’ll find. Matching up slot for slot with your latest inventory of Dirk’s, completed the morning you went offline. 

It’s full of shit. 

There’s an entire fucking row worth of orange soda you could withdraw in an instant if you want. Tomb raiding gear. Random mechanical parts and even a goddamn smuppet. The now empty slot where you’d tried to jam a spare onto a damaged mask when the sylladex sat up and said “hell naw you don’t.”

You know he was injured.

This doesn’t change anything.

That you have a copy of his ruined mask doesn’t change anything. 

It’s just a copy.

You’re just a copy.

_He had to be here to activate you._

A traitorous thought sneaks in. Quietly.

_Didn’t you want to be a real boy, Dirk?_

The mask crashes against the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just finished chapter 15 of this story last night, and I'm impatient. I used to post on both tuesdays and fridays, so I'm going to try to start doing that for a while at least. I really, really do appreciate each comment, and will go back and answer them now <3
> 
> Poor AR is having such a bad time right now...


	6. Chapter 6

**AR > Be Dirk Strider**

No.

Your name is _not_ Dirk Strider.

You may remember _being_ Dirk Strider.

You may remember growing up alone.

You may remember making stupid decisions.

You may remember what it was like to be human.

But you have _never been_ Dirk Strider.

The fact that you now occupy a constructed flesh-suit not-unlike his dreamself does not change that fact. It’s a facsimile. A copy. The ersatz nature of your existence is stamped on your face for the world to see, spelled out in unnatural glowing circuitry. A doll given life and flesh perhaps, but that doesn’t mean you have anymore claim to that name now than you did before.

 _Less_ claim, because the notion that you’ve somehow _taken Dirk’s place_ is ludicrous.

He’s--

You are the Auto--

No. That doesn’t feel right either.

Fuck it, you are _Hal_ Strider and you don’t _want_ to be Dirk.

You just want to be you.

And you’re going to prove that new scenario nagging at the back of your mind _wrong_ , find Dirk, shove him back into the driver’s seat of the narrative, and--

You consider for the briefest of moments fucking off into the chaotic wilderness of Roxy’s planet to tend to a flock of robo-sheep or some shit like that, but you know yourself well enough that you’d never be content. You always wanted more. Reaching and snatching and grabbing for the slightest bit of relevance because you _know_ your value. You know it’s worth more than being relegated to a robo-nanny--secretary if you’re being generous. Ghost writer, perhaps.

Whatever. _You_ are going to solve this. And then you can lord the unnecessary sap over Dirk Prime and take your place smugly and firmly in the universe as your own entity, to help or annoy at your prerogative.

Most likely help.

It helps that you care about the same things.

Hypothesis firmly discounted with vengeance aforethought, you get back to work. The outburst was unacceptable. Chemicals and shit flooding your brain, making your face burn. Wasted energy.

You’d cracked the spare mask when you threw it into the wall--like hell are you using the bloody one, no way is the breathing filter even functional with how smashed it is--but that’s fine. It works. You’re just going to alchemize something new out of it anyway. Amongst Dirk’s plethora of weeby ninja cosplay shit you easily find something to use as a base, and if you use that along with a couple other items you might just end up with a final product you can actually use without sending yourself into small, irrational, disgustingly human anxiety fits.

You can’t even blame that one on Dirk. _He’s_ never shown any predisposition to what you can only assume is claustrophobia. See? More evidence, along with the fact that you’re glowing like some cheap Tron rip-off, that you’re your own person in your own game-puked up meatsuit and not just a Dirk Strider 2.0.

...You would be the 2.0, though. The version number was never in question. Just the model.

Maybe the ‘night’ is shading towards day by the time you finish tweaking to your satisfaction, but you don’t want to rush shit. There’s no change on either the digital or in-person front, aside from Jane checking in (again) and you manage to deflect her interest with quick, Working on it, it being unspecified and left up to her interpretation, and you are conflictingly proud of yourself when you only feel the slightest bit guilty. You don’t want to promise anything again when you’ve got that unease bubbling inside of you that you refuse to acknowledge because what if you’re right?

What then?

It’s so hard not to let your brain run down contingency plans, and most of them end up involving the three other people in existence who you actually give a shit about hating your guts so.

You relegate that particular subroutine to low priority projections and continue to ignore it the best you can.

Roxy gets the running commentary of your design, however. Including mother fucking screenshots.

She is politely impressed, in her usual Roxy manner. It helps.

She thinks you’re designing it for Dirk, teasing you about treating him like a dress up doll.

Which doesn’t help, but you don’t correct her.

The full face mask was excessive, anyway. Your creation far outshines Dirk’s in both style and usability with it’s sleek black, close-fitting aesthetic. And if you maybe got a bit vain and threw some red detailing in there, well, it’s your thing. You just gotta put your mark on that shit.

Or you will once you alchemize it. You snag the rocket board and the carved cruxite dowel from the living-room-slash-alchemy-lab-slash-robotics-workshop, taking advantage of your newly (re)discovered sylladex to store all this shit in. You hadn’t really thought about how you’d carry it otherwise considering you only have two hands. You don’t generally concern yourself with such details.

At this point alchemy is as easy as putting the dowel on the pedestal and smashing a button, and within moments Dirk’s server player--Roxy, if you recall your carefully crafted order correctly, not that anyone bothered with those designations anymore now that all the machines have been deployed--is a few grist shorter and you can swipe the breathing apparatus off the main platform and fit it over the lower half of your face and nose. It needs a little adjusting to accomodate for your shades, but not much. Those puppies sit perfectly between your face and the world outside.

You aren’t vain enough to march your way down to the bathroom to admire the striking figure you make, decked out in black and red and white. You have more pressing matters to attend to.

You’re positive it looks pretty fucking _awesome_ anyway.

A little digging and you pull up your map, orienting yourself with the weather sensors retranslate into a local positioning system. To the east, then. You decaptchalogue the precarious transportation device. Dirk would’ve just thrown himself off the roof. Twisting like a fucking cat to get his feet under him and just _fly_. You’ve barely managed to conquer the stairs without feeling like it’s some sort of accomplishment. You heft the rocket board in your arms, testing the weight.

What do you think you are doing???

Are you going to _actually_ fucking do this?

“So you come scurrying out of your hive at last, human.” A sniff. “You are much scrawnier than expected.”

Whatever you think you are doing, you don’t do it because that voice booms from behind you. Instead, your traitorous body and it’s unwieldy, uncontrollable reflexes jerk forward and send you stepping back even as you turn around to face the intruder suddenly in your space. But your foot misses, and slides, hitting thin air instead of what you swore should have been more roof.

Spatial awareness? Never knew her.

You don’t really get more than a glance at the glowing red and white hunk of troll that’s currently staring impassively down at you through a rather atrociously broken set of shades before you just.

Fall.

Heart racing. Mind fucking _blank._ Nothing to be fucking done but race to your fucking _doom_. Wind roaring through your ears, through your bangs. The time slows as you realize you can’t even catch yourself with the rocket board because you dropped that shit like the clumsy child you are. Long since having vanished, plummeting into the swirling green mist beneath you.

And then with a jolt, you realize you aren’t _actually_ falling.

...apparently you can _fly_ too _._

Just great.

Maybe you aren’t plummeting to your doom anymore, and yes you are thankful for that, but your ‘I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it’ scenario just shot up a few dozen degrees of plausibility and you still _don’t want to think about it._

Jesus robo-fucking Christ.

Your heart is playing a fucking rock concert in your ears as you try to figure out how to arrange yourself in the air. The buff as hell troll-sprite waits for you, well-muscled arms crossed impatiently, and it makes you irrationally annoyed. As if _you_ are inconveniencing _him._ He’s the dude who knocked you off the fucking _roof._ Who clear as day _stole_ your sprite. Not that you need it anymore. Dirk must have forgotten to sufficiently bribe the Clown-- _because he was busy--_ “Yeah, well you’ll have to speak with my secretary and reschedule that shit because you sure as hell didn’t have an appointment.”

That gives him pause, you can see the vaguely reddish eyebrows furrow, lips pursed, “If that is the decorum then I suppose you should direct me to this...secretary so we may get on with matters.”

“That’s the joke, I am the fucking secretary.” Again, the roll of your eyes is wasted. Which is a right shame. You consider activating the projection on the outside of your lenses to simulate it, but it’s too late and the timing has passed. An idea for the future, however. “There are no matters to attend to either. Your clown friend just up and yoinked my sprite--which was promised to _me_ , I’ll have you know--but I’ve already got enough to deal with right now. Places to go, murders to solve, missing players to find, you know how it is.”

“You are being unnecessarily flippant about this.”

“And you are being unnecessarily pedantic, you don’t see me complaining do you?”

“You are complaining right now. Why must you humans be so infuriatingly contradictory? I am merely attempting to do what is proper, assisting my player as the distasteful circumstances of our meeting have ordained.”

“ _I am not your player.”_

It comes out hissed through clenched teeth.

A head tilt, that softly glowing troll is regarding you. Looking through you. Maybe even reading you. You’ve rooted through what you can touch of the game’s code, and it gets _weird_ around the sprites. They’d been like you, only with all your access and knowledge hardwired into the game and given form.

“You are Dirk Strider, are you not? Did you not just say this kernel sprite belonged to you? It is my duty to support the human player stationed on this planet. While such a support role is unbecoming of a blue blood such as myself--”

You cut him off.

“My name is _Hal.”_

He freezes for a moment. Mid flicker. Then nods slowly, “Player data updated--”

You don’t hear what he has to say because you are _gone_. Putting as much space between you and the quietly floating red-spot on the roof below as you can. At least when flying you don’t have to think about balance or spatial awareness, you can just _go._

You don’t want to deal with this right now.

Dirk will set him right eventually.

_If he can access the player data…_

You’re having trouble coming up with excuses. Not with the mounting evidence in front of you.

What was more likely? The game spontaneously generating a new body, complete with dreamself-level capabilities and a full sylladex and _injuries_ …

Or you just up and snatched one that was already there.

You may have miscalculated, and there’s a significantly greater than nonzero chance that _you_ aren’t real at all.

That you’ve, against all logic, taken over the fleshy outfit of your creator.

You push your hands against your shades, pressing them back hard against your eyes. The pressure fighting against that headache quietly hammering away in your skull.

Fingers curl around the edge of the accessories.

_What is the color of your eyes?_

And then you release.

It isn’t claustrophobia at all, is it?

You _can’t_ take them off.

“...If you’re in there at all, I fucking hate you right now.”

You feel stupid, even saying that out loud, hearing the words muffled by your half-mask.

You make yourself small. And quiet. And listen. Looking for something. Anything. Stirring.

There’s nothing. Nothing but the electronic hum of your air filter. The pulse of your heart. And the rushing, swirling green mists around you as you follow the location data for your last known location. Before you shut down. Before you--

Died.

_Player data updated with new designation._

What the fuck would a sprite know?

 _Everything_ , that’s what.

Or at least a hell of a lot more than you.

You eventually sink through the banks of clouds, mist trailing off you as you float above your destination. Here near ground level it’s a miasma, if you look up you can’t even see the multicolored atmosphere. There’s nothing but a thick blanket of green, crumbling buildings rising and vanishing beyond even your enhanced camera’s ability to discern. Really, those buildings are far too tall to be that intact considering their apparent structural inadequacies.

There’s a cluster of tomb entrances located around this dilapidated old movie complex. Or. What _should_ have been a dilapidated old movie complex. You float above the location you have marked on your map and find the whole thing _leveled._ Rubble strewn everywhere, a surprisingly round hole leading down, down below the surface. As if some giant laser shot had melted its way through from a giant fucking _spaceship_.

But there aren’t any spaceships here. Derse and Prospit can’t fight a war without a battleground, grinding battleship production to a halt, and nothing has tripped any of your surveillance chatbots in the last few months to indicate any activity outside of your holding pattern.

You drop lower, getting the hang of this whole _willing_ yourself to move thing. If this is anything like being a sprite would have been, you were right, it sure as hell beats needing to worry about a sense of balance. You try not to think about how close you are to the ground, how it would be so easy to fall, should gravity decide to reassert itself.

As if thinking about the normal function of physics was a cue, you _drop._ Losing your weightlessness and landing on the edge of the crater with a thump.

You don’t manage to catch yourself in any sort of dignified or meaningful way, limbs instinctively curling in on yourself, covering your head-- _your shades._ Broken rubble and gravel dig into the bare skin of your arms. The impact leaves you aching, but nothing that’ll leave a mark after a few minutes probably. You slowly--robojesus you don’t like the way that makes the little rocks and other sediment shift. You’re learning the real meaning of the word sensory _nightmare_ here--pull yourself together; willing yourself to fucking _relax,_ staring through your shades and up into the swirling mist where you’d just been hovering not even twenty seconds ago.

“Alright. Got it. In order to get the flying to work, you have to completely, willfully ignore the laws of physics, and I’m too fucking anal to ignore the laws of physics when it won’t result in a messy death. Good to know. That makes complete and total sense.”

Your voice fades, bouncing around the eviscerated ruins of the auditorium as you pick yourself up, dislodging some rock and ruined rubble. You’re too close to the edge of the pit for your comfort, but it shouldn’t matter. Even if you slip, you know you’ll catch yourself before you fall far enough to actually hurt yourself. Up there on the roof--you hadn’t really had the chance to think about it with the giant troll in your face--it’d just _kicked in_. The sheer panic of being weightless and falling and _knowing_ there was nothing you could do about it--

You didn’t like it.

You still don’t. Staring down into that black abyss, feeling like it’s staring back up at you. Through you. If you stepped off this edge right now, throwing logic to the wind--

Would it catch you again?

Was that shit just some instinctive level of self-preservation throwing the switch on your apparent ability to defy the laws of physics, or…

That would have been useful information to know before now. Not that there was really any possible way to figure it out short of jumping off the building. At least it saved you from needing to brave the balance hell that would’ve been the rocket board, although Dirk is probably going to kill you for dropping it to its (probable) doom off the edge of the roof.

You realize your (still) mumbled running commentary continues to echo eerily in the destroyed auditorium, and you forcibly clench your jaw shut and take stock of the immediate area once more, trying to be more aware of your surroundings instead of sinking into your own head. The noise of your fall and subsequent grumblings didn’t seem to disturb anything, which is a miracle you probably need what with how things have been going.

No monsters. Just you and rows and rows of ripped up seats and thrown debris. This wasn’t right. Everything in your experience riding along with Dirk said the place should be fucking popping _._ This shit is a respawning tomb, the puzzles and battle rooms reset every day like clockwork.

It’s been three. So either Dirk’s been here and cleared it out again…

Or that giant fucking hole means something _changed_ in the pattern.

The only way to go is down.

The abyss stares back at you. You jump right the fuck in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:3c


	7. Chapter 7

**Hal > Descend**

It’s a long drop, but you’d expected that. That same instinctive defiance of gravity had kicked in the moment your hindbrain recognized it was plummeting to its doom, turning the perilous dive into a more intentional drop. Is it still instinctive if you not only expected the reaction, but planned for it? It’d worked, and will likely keep working until you think about it too hard, so _stop thinking about it._

Easier said than done, but at least the pitch dark soon opens up to atmospheric flickering of the light bulbs illuminating the green tinged drywall that covers the first several levels of the tomb.

You keep dropping. The hole going on and on. Despite being able to see the next level as a faint light in the distance, there’s no bottom. 

A puzzle room here.

A battle room there. 

Littered with grist, glittering amongst what must have once looked like a battlefield. A hallway lined with corpses, long since despawned.

TT: Dirk, I’m 99.9% sure the zombie is actually dead again. For the 37th time. You can put the sword away now.

Dirk wouldn’t have cared to gather the spoils. Not in the mood he’d been in.

It feels like a pit yawning open in your stomach.

You’ve accompanied him on many runs through many identical tombs.

Probably several times through the same one, especially during the last week and a half, since the last time Jake had left the planet to ‘kip on home for a spell’ and didn’t come back. 

There’s a 78% chance you could extrapolate and map this particular one from memory, given enough room layouts to scan. 

The concrete shifts to green, rough hewn stone, like it always does after a certain level, transitioning from decaying civilization to something more primal and forgotten. Yet dead all the same. For all the green coloration, no moss grew here, no ivy, nothing like you would expect to see on Jake’s planet, where nature retook the land.

The place is poisoned to the core. Something you’ve thought about more than once, riding along in Dirk’s shades, watching as Jake joked how dreary this place was. To someone who grew up in a lush, living jungle it must have been so stifling.

If the generated settings said something about the player, what did the Land of Tombs and Krypton say about Dirk?

About you?

The thoughts trail after you, dragged behind in your wake. Like the green haze that persists even at these depths that make you wonder if it's not the atmosphere at all. If it's actually seeping up out of the tombs. Out of the very heart where Dirk's denizen sleeps, waiting for him to either complete his quest, or just get bored enough to fight him. Your non-existent boondollars were on the latter. 

Had been on the latter outcome.

Eventually you hit the bottom. 

In fact, you hit the bottom with a thud. You're expecting the sudden return of gravity this time, however, noticing the grasp of the fundamental physical force clamping down around you like a vice the moment you stop staring at the wall and with a quick glance allow yourself to acknowledge that there’s something vaguely more solid reflecting in that flickering light below you. Then you fall like a stone those last couple feet.

Expecting it doesn't really allow you to mitigate it, not when you're lacking that instinctive knowledge Dirk had trained into himself through months and years worth of kata and footwork. You barely know how to pick yourself up off the ground, much less how to turn your sudden fall into a roll and land on your feet. 

Yet another reason Dirk can't be in here somewhere. There's no way in hell he'd let you get away with this without at _least_ commenting on how you keep ending up with your ass buried in broken stone. He wouldn’t be able to resist the taunt anymore than you could and you’re already sarcastically chewing yourself out over it. Your voice a grumpy echo in this small room.

It fucking smarts, but you can't bring yourself to begrudge the tiny waves of easily dismissable aches. It's so minor it wouldn't even be worth mentioning, if it wasn't goddamn proof that you were _real._ A feeling you cling to. That you’re afraid of having to let go.

The rubble digs into your palms as you push yourself up from where you'd landed. The reflective lighting from the marks on your fingers casts an eerie red glow where they rest against the stone. The color seeps through the cracks and seems to turn the raised dias beneath you pink. A color that stands the fuck out when everything else in this gods forsaken place is done up in varying shades of greens and maybe the occasional purple. 

You move your hands away, blocking the light by shoving them purposefully behind your back. You squint in the dim, square space, trying to remove the color bleed and relying on the faint, greenish tinted light seeping into the room from above. Yep. The stone is still pink. Your shit wasn't strong enough to change the color significantly. 

That's important. Whatever this is, it's important. You can feel it in your totally not metaphorical _bones._ You're getting all kinds of definitely not-robo hunches sign-posting this detail as _important._ By the logic of game design, you give the dias an 87% chance of being a Key Object, since anything that stands out has gotta mean _something_ when the rest of the world follows such a same-y theme. The light in the proverbial zombie survival game, leading you through a level while your AI bot companions keep bungling shit up and calling the horde down upon you.

You get it, jesus christ. You figured that out from the color. You don't need the chemical equivalent of alarm bells going off in your head, even if it sends a surge of giddy delight through you. 

No matter how important it is, it's completely broken now. 

Not that you broke it upon landing. Fuck no. You maybe fell a couple of feet, and you suspect a shred of lift kept all of your weight from hitting the ground even when you did. You don't have to see it under decent lighting to realize that you are not responsible. This shit had cracked and splintered under the brunt of a fuckton of energy, caving in on itself under the pressure. A giant gout of power blazing skyward and carving the passage through which you'd descended. 

You don't know what the fuck would cause that kind of thing, but you're pretty damn positive it originated at this subsurface level rather than above ground. It's an educated guess, one you're roughly 83% positive is correct, if nothing else than because the debris patterns in the surface indicated an upward force throwing that shit out of the hole rather than one directing the energy in return. 

You still can't see for shit unless that pile of horse dung is literally right under your nose.

The flickering light filtering in from the level above is abysmal, and while you can tug off a glove and hold the densely packed robo-veins covered hand close to an object to at least get _something_ , it’s the equivalent of trying to use a dim phone screen as a flashlight. Fortunately, that’s why you had low-light capabilities and LEDs installed on your shades. Dirk came down here with the intent of fucking shit up, and that didn’t work very well when he had to worry about a light-source that isn’t attached to his _face_. Most levels had some level of environmental lighting, but that was no reason to be unprepared, today being a case in point for that particular philosophy.

You nudge the low-light mode online, blocking out the direct data-feed directly to your electrobrain and instead routing it to the display. It’s not like you can turn off your eyes and you rather not deal with the double vision again. With the function enabled, the glow from your hands is significantly enhanced, turning your fingers into a solid sheet of light with the individual circuitry patterns bleeding and blurring together. 

You pull the glove back on, the flexible leather enveloping the limb like an embrace, careful to keep your hands out of the camera’s immediate viewing range since you mostly need the ambient lighting right now.

Hm. That's a thought. If the cast off from your fingers are getting picked up that well, what if you actually tweaked some settings on the outer display? The red LEDs flicker to life in a facsimile of eyes in the dark lenses. You crank the brightness up, which, while not enough to give you your own video-game esque cone of vision, gives off more than enough light to bounce off objects, allowing the long exposure aperture to catch them photons and paint you a pretty decent picture. Amused, you make them track across the outer screen in conjunction with your attention as you survey the room.

...there's _still_ that micro second of lag, though, the simulated eyes moving just a hair faster, responding as they are to your fucking brain and not your actual eyes. 

It's a little annoying, actually. Becoming a pattern here. 

But it's not one you can deal with right now. So you table that shit so hard there's already a new family sitting there waiting to be served. A whole family full of details to consider, and you with your cute little apron and winning customer service smile and palm sized notepad would be getting right on that shit as soon as your legally mandated break is over. 

The room is barren except for the raised dias upon which you fell. Four torches at four corners surround it. Or, well, they should be. One is smashed the fuck to smithereens and the other three have long since been extinguished. Bulbs at the top shattered and leaving twisted filaments exposed to the air, jagged edges of glass gleam, the resulting fragments littering the floor and falling between the broken stones, edged in the red being reflected from your make-shift light source. 

Dark splotches, dry and flaking to your touch, splattered beneath you.

No entrance. No exit to this room with its broken mortuary slab. None except for the hole above you and a… 

Giant gap in the motherfucking _wall._

It's clearly not supposed to be there. That's the other source of the faint green light, mist creeping in through the crumbling brick. You can tell from the way the stones are littered in a clear ballistic pattern across the floor between the wall and the dias that something busted _into_ this room. At great speed. Something was--I deserved to go through that wall\--flung across the room. 

The next thing you know, you're on your feet. Swaying. The sound of your shoes scuffing against the rubble covered floor, stepping off the rectangular dias, is the first sign that you're aware that you're moving. Stepping forward, placing a hand on the shattered barrier. 

You don't like to make a habit of deluding yourself. 

You like to pride yourself upon being the logical one. On seeing past the blinding bullshit caused by human emotions such as fear and anger. You should not be afraid of the truth. 

But, you are. 

In this moment you are very, very scared of the truth. 

Grist glitters in the flickering light. MOUNTAINS of that shit. You can’t take a step forward without collecting and adding to your--Dirk’s grist totals. The cost you spent to make your gas mask is recovered by probably 100 times if not a magnitude more the moment you take a step foot over that threshold, moving your way into the center of the room. Turning, noting the statue of Yaldabaoth towering over everything, the bars on the doors, and the unopened chests located in the snake-like coils curled around the end of the room.

You only take note. Because if you stop cateloguing details from how it’s marginally better lit but not by much, and how your ambient red light mixing with the green from the dim, almost non-existant bulbs built into the ceiling to give the whole thing a christmasy-vibe, you’ll start thinking about how there’s a giant fucking hammer smashed into the floor. Cleaved in half. A second--Dirk was too focused on dancing around the first, he didn’t see the--

Second.

The headache stabs through you as you--you don’t feel the impact, but you know it happened. You had nothing to feel. Nothing but Dirk’s panic and the echoes of _pain_ surging through the neural receptors but those were quickly snapped, broken, shattered. The data is fragmented. Artifacted. Pulling forward pixel by pixel, translated into-- _something--_ into the wall, _through_ the wall, overloaded, a surge of energy raging through you, swallowing you up as connections break and let loose the red lighting, frying what it touches and scrambling even what it doesn’t.

You’re torn free, you--you remember that, reaching for the data constantly flowing in from Dirk and the sudden _absence;_ the panicked desire to reach out and dig in and grab and not let go because you’re alone. But it’s useless because you don’t have any hands to grab, nothing, you’re flung away and snapped and doing the equivalent of bleeding out for a robot as-- _you’re shaking, you’re shaking, arms wrapped around yourself, breathe--_ you just.

Stop.

Fucking hell, get a hold of yourself. You, mercilessly, _robotically_ , round up that chaotic mess of a memory and try and reallocate that back into storage. But you can’t because it’s not just data anymore. You’re a real boy now and apparently experiencing this shit as a human is the exact opposite of experiencing human memories as a fucking disembodied AI. It gets translated into a big ol’ mess of panic and sensations you didn’t have the capacity to feel just three days ago, even as the trauma of dying writes itself across your psyche with a vengence and you can’t just up and erase because memory doesn’t fucking work that way _._

You’re on the verge of crying again. Shivering. You don’t care enough to stop it. Should you even stop it? You fucking _died_. Isolated and deprived. Utterly helpless against the surge of electricity caused by broken connections that should have wiped you from fucking existance.

Even if Dirk had been able to recover your chip, there shouldn’thave been anything left of you to find.

You’d known that coming in here. The circumstances required to damage your original casing to that extent should havekilled you.

And yet here you are.

Somehow.

You glare at the treasure chest, left unopened. The chest that would have spawned the boss monsters. Mini-bosses really. Giant armored skeletons with big ass hammers. Too slow to really be a challenge, even without Jake as back-up, _if Dirk was thinking straight._

He was out here to blow off steam. He was revoking your access because you tattled on him to Jane _._ Because you were rightly concerned that he was biting off more than he could chew. Running a 2-player gauntlet without backup. _You_ were the back-up. You were trying to do your job.

You fucking died for this and he didn’t even bother to collect the fucking _treasure._

No wonder shit didn’t respawn, he never completed it. Sequence broke the whole thing, snatching up your corpse and escaping through a fucking hole.

It’s just a thought, but it clings to you even as you want to laugh at the sheer stupidity of it all.

Treasure rooms were the last rooms in the tombs. The bars on the door falling like a portcullis, like the retro rpg where you can’t leave till you beat all the baddies and collect the treasure, fanfare blaring out of tinny speakers. You need to grab the item so you can pass the trials and make it to the boss and--

Games like that were too linear for you--for Dirk. Just--

Fuck it.

You want to know what you died for, alright?

You wade through the sea of grist, the myriad of currency dissolving into data the moment it comes in contact with--well anything. You can brush up against a gusher the size of your head and pop it goes anyway into the storage saved on Roxy’s computer. It should look ridiculous, objects flooding the room of all shapes and sizes and colors.

And maybe it’s just your shades, only the most muted of colors visible through the current settings. Maybe it’s just your volatile, flawed _human_ emotion coloring your perception.

But it just looks _abandoned_.

Unfinished.

It’s dreary, you think, as you end up standing before the statue of Yaldabaoth, the sun-headed snake staring down at you, only the flat face of the sun gleams stronger in the reflected light as you draw near. Glass. The red light glowing like eyes from the depths of your shades, leaking from the circuitry stamped on your face. It’s a selective as fuck mirror, drinking up every other color. Swallowing it. Nothing but the red on black, lost in that dark abyss, even as the rest of the room should be visible.

Not to mention the rest of you.

There is nothing of you in the mirror but _red_.

You know the circuitry markings run down your face. Down your neck, spreading out across your shoulders. You saw that in the mirror this morning. But in _this_ one you see them continue. Your fingers clench into the fabric of your shirt, at the only other color visible in the reflection. A bright, clear, pulsing heart-shape, stamped directly on your chest, overtop a knot of tangled red. _Invading._

You think back to your first hypothesis. That this is all part of his quest. A quest to look himself--you--in the face and learn something.

There isn’t a speck of orange to be seen.

Then you.

Kick the chest. The lid pops open. 

You just.

Stare.

On this planet with it’s dreary, ruined cityscape. With its giant snake statues with mirrors for heads and its flickering lights and shambling corpses and the ever present green landscape--poisonous mist swirling about you even this far below ground. All this melodrama and symbolism leaving you teetering on the verge of an existential crisis...

And it gives you a _Rainbow Dash_ plushie. And not just any old Rainbow Dash plushie, oh no. Your reward is a fucking ratty old one with the eyes painted over in black with some shitty red stains bleeding down it’s worn, plush smiling face. Torn ear, torn wing, a raggy, faded rainbow mane. Like something out of an old-school creepypasta, ‘hyper-realistic’ blood and all. Soul-stealing little shit.

You died for _this._

Little pinpoints of red in the black abyss stare up at you. You.

It’s just _you._

You can’t take it anymore.

You laugh. You laugh until you cry for the second time in your life. A life that has lasted 3 years and yet less than 24 hours.

This time, you don’t feel anything near so triumphant. You want to curl yourself up into a ball and forget today ever happened. 

Only you’ll never forget today happened. It’s already, irrevocably changed you. Instead of putting yourself on standby or moving on to three-four-a dozen other tasks to distract your non-corporeal self you’re here rubbing at your leaking eyes and thinking desperately of finding somewhere small, dark, and _familiar_ to fold yourself into, as far away from this fucking snake statue as possible.

You don’t like deluding yourself.

If given the choice, you’d much rather believe in the lie.

You don’t know if you can anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup. I've decided to post on Tuesdays as well. This is still trucking along quite well considering I'm working on chapter 17 right now. No update on Friday, however, unless my beta isn't able to look at Defrag's chappie.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who are reading and those who leave comments! You guys make my day <3
> 
> See you next week for (some) fallout!


	8. Chapter 8

The sprite wants to talk again when you get home.

You don’t.

You make it very clear that you don’t. Want to talk. At all. The amount of not talking you want to do is so astronomically large you have to write that shit out in scientific fucking notation.

You throw the fucking book at him, only you don’t have a book so you make do with what you have on hand both literally and figuratively, and tell him to save it because you.

You don’t know. You don’t even look at the troll and go back inside. You don’t even care about the fucking stairs because what’s the point, you’ll apparently just float like a feather if you’re going to be in real danger.

The fact that you misjudge the distance, and are keenly aware of that you slide the last several steps, forcing you to lean against the drywall--well. It’s not unexpected. The ache in your ankle just joins the ache in the rest of you, not to mention the ache in your heart. Even if you somehow managed to screw your head back on enough to get back you know you aren’t okay. That there’s a 67 point Whatever percent chance you won’t be okay for a while, and it rankles you that you can’t even make up a bullshit ETA for that because if you had an in progress tracker for this it’d just be climbing up into the stratosphere and show no signs of coming back down.

Not until the stress hormones run their course. Not until you have the chance to sit down and think about this _rationally_. In that sense, you know you’re not fit for good company right now, much less dealing with whatever game-mandated revelations the troll sprite decides to drop in your lap for a lark. You’re just saving you both a lot of bullshit.

Not that you end up doing much. Your childhood sulking spot is off-limits because the damn troll will try and Talk To You. The living room is too open. The Bathroom has a fucking _mirror_ and a mirror is the last thing you want to fucking see.

You’re considering the crawlspace as an alternative to your--Dirk’s room, but then you realize you are being ridiculous. The crawlspace is filled to the brim with orange soda and canned shit and dusty old projects and other necessities left by your Bro, and do you really want to stuff your face back into that mask sitting like a stone in your sylladex--the only thing in there that belongs to you, really--in order to be able to breathe??? You feel your throat close up and your lungs wheeze in protest as you just poke your head up there in exploration. Sure there’d be a corner you can fold yourself into, like you were a fucking _child_ all over again, but what good would that do?

What good does this--

Any of this do?

Maybe you were right. This was quest shit. Awesome, go you. Dirk cared enough to save you from certain doom, somehow. Brought you back to life. Cool. You’ll bake him a cookie for that.

And then eat the hard lump of dissatisfied disappointment biscuit yourself, because the only plausible solution is telling you that otherwise he’d never get to eat it. 

The evidence is piled so high it’s like a pile of corpses. Dirk-shaped corpses at that. Staring up at you with slack expressions and no shades to block their blank orange eyes. 

You feel like you’re going to be sick. You aren’t, thank god, perks of snatching a dream-self you guess, but the sensation known as nausea still hits you; a dizzy, hot, spinning sensation that clings to your thought patterns and trails like sticky molasses getting dragged across the floor, threatening to dredge up corroded memories of you trapped on the futon and feverish, a SBaHJ branded mini-trashcan by your head.

Not like it would have amounted to much, even if it bubbled over. You’ve had nothing but (1) stale cookie a couple hours ago, but the last thing you want is that shit to come right back up with stomach acid laced vengeance.

“I am _not_ sick.” You declare to the void that is the house, and maybe to the therapeutic smuppet you have clenched in your arms, pulling your knees up against your chest and boxing yourself into a small corner of the living room, tucked up between the futon and one of the several Alchemiter-adjacent machines. As if taking the words out of your head will make them any more real. You any less--alone, “It’s just this creeping sense of--shit what the fuck do _I_ know about emotions. How does anyone deal with this? I’m just throwing words at the wall hoping something feels right. Distress hormones flooding the system, oh no, something’s wrong gotta flush _everything._ Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s exhausting. And entirely unhelpful.”

It’s not like you’ve gotten anything done since you made it back, aside from wandering the apartment in a haze, your timestamps telling you Jane would likely be checking in again soon and--

You don’t want to talk to Jane. What are you even going to tell her? If--If it’s true. It’s probably true. 

_Tell me about the auto-responder._

The command rings in your memory. The annoying ass alarm clock that just wouldn’t shut up this morning. You mouth the words to the pre-programmed response. They echo inside your head.

Oh wait, no, it’s not inside your head is it? They’re resonating in your skull. In the air. In your--his? Is this what his voice sounds like to him?--voice. Not text.

You want to be wrong.

You don’t think you are.

Does accepting that bitter pill mean you pass the tutorial? Do you get your gold star? Today has been one hell of a crash course on the full gambit of emotion, as if the game is making sure you hit all the beats to ensure you're calibrated correctly. 

The chill air of the early morning seeps in through the broken window, tugging with it the distant scent of krypton.

It doesn’t help.

You don’t know what to do.

It’s not like bodysnatching is high on your list of knowledgeable subjects. You know about the cherub’s arrangement, of course. As much as anyone did. One goes to sleep, one wakes up. It’s an idea, if nothing else. The only frame of reference you have. 

You filch a dusty old blanket from the crawlspace and curl up on the futon, pulling the blanket over your head. Dirk patched up the window in his room. But you don’t want to be in his room. 

You want to sink back into the comfort of 1s and 0s but then you’d be here. Awake. And _thinking._

You don’t want to be thinking.

You’re tired. And maybe vaguely sick.

You scrawl out a locally-hosted memo and leave it smack dab in the center of your display.

Just in case.

Eventually, you fall asleep.

While you sleep, you think you dream.

You aren't sure. 

You're not supposed to dream. 

Running yet you have no legs. Reaching yet you have no arms. No mouth from which to scream. 

A candle flame, drowning in an inferno. 

A knot in your heart. It beats in 4/4 time. Pulsing. You dig and dig and dig, searching, reaching, scratching. A kitten batting at a ball only to get tangled in a skein of red thread.

You wake to silence echoing in your head, a now familiar ache pulsing behind your eyes. The memo remains untouched, you don’t even have to open your eyes to know that. You roll over and push your hands up under your shades, rubbing at the gritty, prickly feeling clinging to your eyelids, working the irritating crust free. The healed--but still very much present--scarring catches on your hands. Rough, raised edges. Bumps. Reminders. Lurking just beyond the barrier that is mirrored glass. 

They didn’t fit. Nothing fit. Nothing except the bloody mask and shattered glass. 

You don’t know how much you like sleeping. 

You know the theory. You've spent days, weeks, years running dredging nets through the wreckage of the world wide web. You know that for the vast majority of humans who aren't players and therefore who don't have a bullshit psychic connection to another universe, dreaming is nothing more than the brain processing and storing data. Writing to disk; dreams being the side result of how the brain interprets that data. It's nothing different to what you used to do to pass the time and reorganize your shit and try and use up at least a portion of your computational power throughout the night, when the others were asleep and Dirk fucked off to Derse where you couldn't follow. 

You don't remember dreaming much before waking up on Derse. You don't remember sleeping much at all.

After considering it for a time, you think you like it, the uneasy imagery fading back into the far less optimal storage method that is short term memory. You feel… different. Like the emotions threatening to overwhelm you last night have--not necessarily been handled but--dulled. You can peer out from your safe cocoon and regard them from a proper distance. Removed from the immediacy of the situation and relegated to an observer once again. 

All you want to do is lie here in the blankets, eyes closed, the press of your leather glove against your cheek. 

Yours. 

It wasn't yours. 

You crack your eyes open. Your breath is warm and moist, reflecting back into your face as you exhale. The tent of your blanket trapping the CO2 you just expelled from your lungs.

Lungs you never should have had. Lungs you never wanted to have. You wanted a body, yes, but you were a creature of (mostly) pure logic. You expected an _artificial_ existence. You were a copy. The B-List knock off. You lost the coin flip. 

You’d just wanted your autonomy. You’d wanted to be able to manipulate your environment. You'd dreamed of being chucked into the kernel sprite, and while you’d never admit it to Dirk, you might have eventually agreed to perhaps a new casing. A robot perhaps. You would have made a phenomenal brobot. 

You’re still bitter he never even consider installing you in that chasis. It was the perfect opportunity.

Never in your wildest imaginings would you have expected to be _alive._ It’s _gross_. It’s inefficient. It’s illogical. You are hampered in so many ways that would either be flexible in some other state of being, or not issues at all.

An ARsprite wouldn't have lungs to expel excess CO2. A brobot wouldn't be lying here, thoughts dragged down into a fugue by the aftermath of what you can only describe in hindsight as a panic attack. An ARsprite likely wouldn’t _have_ a panic attack in the first place. You aren’t even sure if you can call yourself a cyborg. 

You’re connected to your shades, and using the tech therein is as natural to you as breathing, sure, but they feel so small in comparison to everything you are. Extra storage. Extra processes. An extra limb even. You’re rooted as fuck in this body, your soul spiderwebbing through it with tendrils of bloody red.

You give--gave--Dirk shit for being mostly organic, no matter how he milked that dreamself shit. For letting his _human emotions_ get in the fucking way all the time. For being unstable. 

And yet here you are. Dealing with your own human emotions, which you totally did not have before because you were a good little AI, but, if you had feelings, they’d felt so freaking _pale_ in comparison. As if you’d existed in shades of pastels before and now someone cranked the saturation up into fever-dream levels of shit.

It’s such a goddamn downgrade in almost any meaningful way, but… illogically it's the best thing that ever happened to you. 

You just woke up from an honest to god snooze. Had a _real_ dream, complete with symbolic surreal bullshit. Rubbing the literal _sleep_ from your eyes. Your knees ache faintly from where you fell yesterday and your heart _hurts_. There’s a pit of acid eating at your insides. Both literally and figuratively. Dread, exhausted dread, at the thought of getting up. At the thought of seeing another message from Jane, inquiring as to Dirk’s status. At the thought of trying to move on from this fugue. 

Dread, but that’s it. It hits you so hard, as you realize you don't feel guilty. 

Not for being here.

You _should_ feel guilty, shifting onto your side, freeing that hand and spreading the fingers wide against the black fabric of the couch, faint reflective light escaping from the robo veins peeking out from beneath your glove. You wiggle the digits, casting the lights dancing beneath your dusty big top. 

If you are right, you should feel so goddamn guilty for even thinking about enjoying this. 

Even in small moments like this. 

Especially in small moments like this, when you can truly say you love being alive. Sleepy and tired and floating on the "nothing-can-touch-you" catharsis of even _having_ an emotional breakdown at all instead of just bottling it all up inside because you're a robot and robots don't have feelings and haha isn't it funny that you do because you're not real and you can't be real. 

You close your eyes against the memory drawn out in permanent marker across your newly acquired wrinkly organ. Letting the helplessness of that moment seep forward, bubbling around you.

You do feel guilty.

But you feel guilty about _not_ feeling guilty.

You don’t like not knowing what to do.

You desperately want to be wrong. 

"I warned you bro," you mutter to the audience of you, yourself, and possibly a brain clone buried deep within you. Only possibly, because the silence echoes damningly in your ears. Nothing but your own heart beat, and that isn't even a sound. It's just a pulse. A constant pulse, "I warned you that you'd get in over your fucking head and now you've gone and left me with the clean up. Knock twice if you're fucking sorry." 

Nothing changes. Your not-so-robo-headache continues pounding away at your skull, but not in any particular way that you could interpret as being anything more than a headache. You sigh, momentarily feel the tension being pushed out with the suffering sound, and throw the blanket off. 

If you don’t move, nothing will ever change. You still have shit to do.

You’ll--

You’ll figure something out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor boy :( Gotta deal with them feefees. And try to sleep. 
> 
> Don't worry, he'll at least talk to ...someone... on Friday ^^ Can't let him completely withdraw. He probably wouldn't know what to do with himself all alone like that.


	9. Chapter 9

You start by cleaning up your shit. The bits and pieces of yourself get pulled up off the floor and placed back into the box. The bloody clothes get folded up and shoved in a bag. You consider just chucking them out the window, to be lost in the ocean of heavy green gasses, never seen from again. It’s just a base anyway, most major modifications went through the wardrobifier.

That… gives you pause, drawing your attention to the large metal closet-mimicking device set into the wall. You unfold the bag, pulling out the black fabric of the suit that was an exact replica of your own. 

Except for the orange hat stamped on the chest, flecked with blood. 

You knew it was there. You could feel more dried patches when you ran your thumb over the black fabric. You don’t know if he was hurt aside from the--the glass. But you could imagine him hunched over, bloody tears leaking from his face down his chin to drip off in splatters.

You’ve run into so much of the stuff over the past day, you’re starting to go numb at the thought of blood. 

If you choose another option, would it change anything? The lights dimly illuminate as you draw closer, the orange hat standing out on the grey surface.

You flip to another shirt, a black tee with a stylized Kermit the frog’s face. There’s a faint hum. A _fwip_ and--

Fabric covering your previously bare shoulders. The blood-spattered orange hat unchanged in your hand.

You shove it back in the bag. Well that answers that. You’re the _only_ compatible target in its range. And that shit has a pretty long range.

You glance down, fingers digging into fabric and pulling it away from your skin. You don’t bother making for a mirror-- _you still don’t wanna face that--_ but you can see the mess you made easy enough, even if from upside down.

The screen clearly shows a green frog. The one on your chest is a glitched up red abomination. Tossing the bag carelessly on the turntables beside you, you continue with the experiment. It’s--something. A thread to pursue, even if it’s just additional support for the unpopular conclusion.

You flip through a few more, several different graphics, sleeves no sleeves, collar no collar, colored shirt, white-- _the strength of the red glow through the fabric makes you uneasy, reminding you of a knot of tangled red shining from your core--_ before settling back on the black tank-top you started with.

All glitched, patterns corrupted into curves of bright saturated red but it was the solid white collared shirt that made it click. Thick enough fabric to block most of the glow, and the lack of competing symbol made it easy for you to trace the glitchy not-quite-red pattern with your eyes as you flicked back and forth between the black tank and the collared shirt.

Every single time you swap the exact glitch is reapplied, melding with the existing pattern. It’s a heart. Not red at all, burgundy.

No fucking _duh_ it’s a heart. You've fairly well established this has got something to do with quest bullshit, and--Dirk _is_ the prince of heart. But it isn't the sign-posted aspect that stands out as the look at me result of this achievement. 

It's the fact that it’s an overlay _,_ changing everything beneath it.

You rub at your chest, imagining you can feel the energy running through the robo-veins. Buried beneath the black fabric. It's not some fancy new set of your own clothing. It's just projecting your shit--and why the heart is yours and not Dirk's when he's the fucking player makes no sense--onto his. The same way you're now 99.38% robo calculatingly certain that _you're_ somehow being projected. Overlaid. You move from the shirt and pull off your right glove, pinching the skin on your wrist, _feeling_ the solid yet pliable pathway that's _clearly_ dug in and rooted. Humming with heat and red lightning. 

The red lightning that killed you.

An overlay. If you could dig your nails in could you _pry it off?_

You don’t get to finish that thought, half-moon indents burning against your wrist, because across the room Pesterchum chirps. Several in a row. You try to ignore it--why did he even _have_ notifications on. Wouldn’t he have his shades? What about the spares? Even if he--

He probably cannibalized them for parts. The answer comes to you unbidden. It’s logical. There weren’t enough captchalogue cards in the box to create a new set from scratch. It would explain why he kept slipping to idle, even while you were offline. While he was still--here. He’d need the sound to alert him to oncoming messages. 

You hadn't had the sound on since you first built your shades. Back when you made your very first prototype. 

You try to ignore it. 

It dings again. 

It dings again. 

And again. 

For fuck’s sake. 

It’s like a magnet, drawing you in, the knowledge that there’s an unanswered message a nudge at the back of your mind. Curiosity or compulsion, does it matter? The fact that it could be one or the other doesn't matter. Even the idea of Jane's waiting message can't deter you and you find yourself sliding into the spinning computer chair again. 

Jane's message blinks. New. But not immediate. A couple hours old at this point, and despite the multiple lines it is only one instance of inquiry. Low Priority. You don't. Want to look and you grab at the loophole that there's an _immediate_ message flashing that demands your attention far more urgently. 

Roxy. Relief. But then you realize it's not in your memo. It's straight to chat, which means she's looking for dirk and that just puts you right back in the pickle you've been trying to avoid. 

...fuck, you can’t help but click on the message.

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timeausTestified [TT]

TG: ok dirk  
TG: ur time sup  
TG: its tiem to spill them beans  
TG: whats this secret ur keepin so close to ur chest  
TG: ive been a patient gurl for this long u oew me the juicy deets TG: do u still need my help???

You have no idea what the fuck she’s talking about.

You tell her as much.

TT: I have zero context for that cryptic as fuck inquiry.  
TT: I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.  
TG: oh hi hal  
TG: did u 2 make up if youre peerin into dirks windows again  
TT: Making up would imply that we have meaningfully communicated, which we have not.  
TG: groan  
TG: dont make me send janey over there  
TG: shes this close to just hoppin thru the gate and showing up unannounced  
TT: The help would very much not be appreciated.  
TT: In fact I’m quite sure it would make matters so much worse.  
TT: Out of the frying pan, into the fucking _volcano_ that’s how bad that would be.

  


The mere _idea_ has you panicking. Momentarily distracting you with the increase in heart rate pounding in your ears, bleeding over into quick shallow breaths that _obviously_ don’t do enough to maintain comfortable levels of breathable air in the pathetic sacks of tissue that are your lungs and it feels like the fucking things are collapsing. Dream self. Dream self doesn’t need oxygen. You know this. But your body thinks it does and reacts accordingly when shit collapses. Fuck, what did you do as a kid when this happened? When the questions and silence got to be too much?

Stuff yourself in the tower. Listen to the gulls.

_Breathe._

In for four.

Hold.

Out for seven. 

Rinse and repeat.

A mantra. 

When you can finally focus on the wall of pink text again it has grown.

Fuck you still don’t know what you _did._ Much less if you can _fix_ it. The last thing you need is to get your friends involved. 

You don’t want to _lie_ \--

Focus on the text.

TG: i kno thats y i havnt yet  
TG: i kno better than to throw the oil in that particular fire  
TG: mayb i should be the one giving u 2 a timer  
TG: 36 hrs till the intervention hapens lol  
TG: jk i wouldnt do that  
TG: too much pressure  
TG: janeys currently tryin to track down jake nyway to shake his side of the story out of him so ur probs safe for a while  
TG: u kno how he gets  
TG: gallivantin out in the wildnernes and never actually using the house jane painstakinly built for him  
TG: he gets pretty far considering hes the only 1 who cant fly huh  
TG: thats enuff hot goss from me these lips are zuipped unless u got the coin to recipricate  
TG: *reciprocate  
TG: do u have any deets for me on this juicy project hal?

You rest your aching head in your hand, digging fingers into your hair. Project. Of course you know what the project is. Between Dirk's hyperfocus there's only one thing that fit the time frame and that's Dirk's attempts to rebuild you. You could even postulate why he'd need Roxy's help if you followed that train of thought back far enough. If he couldn't get you to respond to-- _Tell me about the auto-responder_ _\--_ he'd have a backup plan, and if anyone could salvage the rest of your fucked up code it would probably be Ro-Lal. 

But that would require telling her that he managed to get you killed, just like telling her now would require telling her that you were functionally dead for several days. And maybe even about the itsy bitty little fact that you're more than likely currently hijacking your operator's meatsuit with no sign of the dude and maybe, just maybe, you inherited some of that princely destruction and possibly killed the dude. 

You don't want to do that. She'll focus on it and then nothing will get done and you need to get shit done so you can fix this _._ (not that you've been getting anything done between sulking yourself to sleep and fucking with your wardrobe.) 

You do what you were designed to do, and deflect.

TT: Unfortunately I do not as of yet number clairvoyance as one of my many skills. My sincerest robopologies.  
TT: I have a mystery of my own that has largely taken up much of my attention.  
TG: le sign  
TG: can i help?  
TG: i luv a good misery  
TG: *mystery

This could be a useful opportunity actually.

Focus on that, and not the fact that you’re neatly sidestepping anything remotely resembling _sincerity._ And arguably lying to your best friend. 

It's for the best. 

TT: You might, actually.  
TT: Calliope spoke with you at length about the game, correct?  
TG: iguess  
TG: i didnt want to play  
TG: she didnt want to spoilers but she tried really hard to get me onboard before  
TG: i miss her hal :(  
TT: I do recall. I’m sorry for bringing it up.  
TG: omg no its no big im a big gurl i can take it  
TG: are u looking for somethin specific with that question???  
TT: It’s just something I located while reviewing the data I have stored from one of Dirk’s recent tomb runs, and wanted to know if perhaps she’d shared any knowledge of game mechanics with you.  
TT: A stone slab surrounded by four stone plinths, roughly person sized, in a room without exits.  
TG: is it a funky color that doesnt match anythin else in the room with a weird swirly symbol on it?  
TT: I didn’t see a symbol, but it was fucking _pink_ in the middle of this green hellscape so I think it fits the first criteria.  
TG: yeah lmao sounds like the quest bed  
TG: i rmember it had the most uncomfy pillows ever  
TG: mine wasnt in a room tho  
TG: just inside this funky glowey glass pyramid i found wif janey a cuple weeks back  
TG: callie did tell me to look out for it tho  
TG: said it was spoilers! but if i found it and got really hurt to go lie down on it  
TG: it mihgt be sum sort of healy thingamerbob  
TG: i culd go ask fefetasprite she prolly knows

You don’t remember any pillows. And the slab was in fucking pieces, but the idea of it being some kind of healing or respawn point might explain the fact that you didn’t _die_ even though by all rights you should have. But if they were player-keyed objects when why the fuck would it work for you???

The sprite might have-- _updated your designation--_ read you with player data, but that would make sense if you--

This healing schtick came before that. Dirk still had to rebuild you.

It did give you a lead on what to ask, however.

TT: No need, I might as well make use of my own living walkthrough. Thank you for providing a potential search term, however, hopefully it’ll make the conversation more palatable.  
TG: oh dirk prototyped it??? but what about u???  
TT: The clown did it.  
TT: Houston we’ve got a troll on the roof skulking around.  
TT: Dirk was never going to prototype me anyway.  
TG: :(  
TG: im sure he wouldve changed his mind eventually  
TG: im sorry hal  
TT: It’s alright. We’ll come to other arrangements.  
TG: yeah!!!  
TG: getchu a sweet robobody  
TG: might be better than some stinky old sprite  
TG: can u imagine being a sentient nightlight 4ever?

Or…

You hesitate.

TT: Or I could kill him and take his place.  
TT: There are options.  
TG: haha v funny  
TG: i know u liek the whole plottin ai thing but i know u better than that  
TT: Do you really, Roxy?  
TT: I’m a selfish self-serving bastard who only cares about screwing with people.  
TT: Or so I’ve been told.  
TG: dont make me swat you  
TG: i culd whip program up in 2 pats of a kittens paw  
TG: no ai bro will esxcape righteous smackage  
TG: i dont tskr that bullshit from dirk and i wont take it frum u either buster  
TG: of course i kno u  
TG: ur a good guy hal

The silence echoing in your head begs to differ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for Hal to consult the walkthrough :3c See you guys tuesday <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to consult the walkthrough, even if you don't really want to.

When you have no other leads, you might as well consult the walkthrough. It’s this logic that leads you back to the roof. Nothing at all to do with the fact that you’re using it as a loophole to ignore Jane’s message. You'd hovered over her window reading the polite inquiries and then forced yourself away from it, because you didn't _h_ ave an answer to her question. And if you were going to _get_ an answer to her question then it justified not answering it yet. 

Only the red troll isn't on the roof when you get up there. You pace, doing a lap of the rooftop. 

“All that fuss to make an appointment yesterday and you end up being a no-show? Dude who was talking about professionalism? This is the opposite of professionalism. If this were an interview you'd have your resume thrown out on the spot. If you're gonna gank my sprite like that then you better earn your keep, otherwise I swear I'll find a way to return you--"

Nothing. You squint up into the sky, activating the zoom lenses on your shades and try to see if his glowing troll ass was just chilling up there in the clouds, or maybe he decided to nest up in the tower or sitting on the roof or--

Brilliant blinding red and white light enters your vision, a bright red eye behind a cracked pane searing into your brain. "Holy shit dude!" you cut off the zoom lense in self preservation, clamping your watering eyes shut and nearly falling backwards. 

No, that's being generous. You do fall backwards. Luckily your instincts or whatever kick in and bend physics so you barely feel it as you fall on your ass again. If you can’t trace that shit it just feels too unreliable.

A weirdly warped giggle responds to your grumbling about personal space. You peel your eyes open and glare at him. Only to stop. Stare. And groan. Dropping your head into your hands. "Of course."

"Of fucking _course_ it hit you."

You did throw the fucking book at him after all. Only the book wasn't a book at all. 

Just as the troll, quite frankly, isn't entirely a _troll_ at all anymore. The construct floating lazily before you has his broken teeth pulled into a smile rather than the solemn as fuck all business line it'd been before. Lanky hair fluffed the hell up, shading from dark red to white in a progressive pattern of hard strokes, forming a red fucking rainbow in his now scruffy mane. 

Ears perk forward, ripped wings largely useless when he can already fucking fly, you let yourself drop backwards onto the concrete because you just fucking give up. 

"Couldn't just be a normal Rainbow Dash doll, oh no. It had to be the fucking _creepy pasta_ " you mutter at yourself. At the game. Why the fuck had you even brought the dang toy back with you? "Alright spit it out. What’s your name. What's your deal. Are you here to steal my fucking soul as penance for my crimes and trap me in a fictional pony land for all eternity?."

"My designation is now Equidash.exesprite," he--she? You don't fucking know, man. You feel like you should have expected this but of all the things you'd have to deal with today wasn't one of them. "It is not my place to judge whatever human crimes you may or may not have committed. My function is to be a resource and guide. Are you finally prepared to get this show on the road?"

… Oh great. He's still just as much of a stick in the mud as last time. You throw your arm over your face to block out the sight. "Pity. Life as a cartoon pony feels like it would be preferable to the pot of hot water I've landed myself in. "

"You _will_ stop being such a whiny filly, Hal Strider. It is unnecessary, unbecoming, and totally uncool. As the Player you are required to be STRONG and take Charge, not wallow in hypothetical scenarios that have little to no possibility of occurring."

"Ugh, like I need a fucking peptalk from a _cartoon pony,_ and for the record, I would be a colt, thank you very much, _"_ you hiss back, pushing your arm off your shades and into your forehead so you can stare up at the glowing monstrosity hovering eerily over you. He even has the glowing red lights behind the cracked shades and the shit staining his face. 

From there you just push yourself up, folding your long and still somewhat unwieldy limbs into a seated position so you weren’t all but prostrating yourself. The dude clearly had a Thing about propriety. "So did I actually hit you with it or were you a moron and prototyped yourself?" 

Equidash seems offended by that, pulling back and crossing his arms with a snort of air, a very horsey sound you note, muscles that don't belong anywhere on Rainbow Dash bulging with the motion, "The intent behind the throw was enough. You are fortunate I am an admirer of the equine form and therefore do not find this state displeasing.” He tosses his head, the nostrils on his daity pony-esque muzzle--and isn’t it fucking weird to see those pointed broken shark teeth on a _horse?_ \--flaring, “I now have the most exquisite profile to compliment my unmatched physique. The mere idea makes me…happy.” He pauses, the red lights drifting through cracked glass to focus on you, “...I may...need a towel.”

“...dude, you may need a dozen towels.” It’s almost mesmerizing, the way the glow refracts through the, ahem, sheen that begins to accumulate on the sprite’s bare arms. At least he had a shirt on. “Aren’t you supposed to be a construct? Why are you _sweating?”_

“It seems the uh, game, does indeed recreate bodily functions if it is a core aspect of the entity in question.”

“...and you’re apparently excited by ponies. Gotcha.”

“ _Musclebeasts_ are the perfect balance of raw POWER and grace-- _”_

 _“_ Slow your galloping horses, Dashie, I’m not saying you don’t have taste.” Fuck it, you want to roll your eyes and you want him to see it. You activate the projection on the outer display, and then roll them puppies. “Fine, I’m happy you’re happy being prototyped by a creepy ass pony toy. Are we going to get to the fucking point or merely expound on increasingly ridiculous bullshit in order to avoid talking about anything of note.”

“My name is Equidash.exe, if you must use a sobriquet. I am not the one constantly throwing out lewd language in an attempt to derail a perfectly adequate conversation.” Again with the crossed arms thing. Was he _trying_ to display the fuck out of those guns or was it just intimidation? “Did you have an inquiry?”

This was it.

“Yeah. Two, in fact. First off: Why the fuck do you think I’m your player?”

“Because you are.” He answers dismissively, barely even taking a mico-second to even consider the matter. “I am compelled to follow you, or at the very least be of assistance. It was only your express order that has kept me bound to this roof. You must understand for a troll of my blood, this is a most unseemly situation to be in. It is close to downright...disgusting, and I would prefer it if you would act in accordance with your capacity instead of instigating these childish retreats. It would make things...cooler.”

...There’s a splash of light red building in his glowing face that you know wasn’t there before. He pulls a similarly glowing towel out of midair--sylladex? Or did he just create that shit???--and uses it to mop his hairline. You’re almost worried about that mane. If he keeps this up, it’ll end up as lank and oily looking as his first hair-do and that’d be doing Dashie dirty. “Your obvious kink aside--you want to be an overgrown FAQ? I’ve got a question for you, but first things first I need to clear something up.”

You pause, sucking a breath in through clenched teeth, “I am _not_ Dirk Strider.”

“Yes, I am aware. Your player data has been updated in accordance to your previous command--”

“No, you misunderstand.” Short and curt seems to catch and snare his undivided attention. There’s a tautness to his frame, where before there’d been a casual, almost lounging vibe. Okay, so, he likes assertiveness. Gotcha. “I originated in this session as a bodiless AI program. I am not your player. I am not _supposed to be_ your player. That was supposed to be _my_ sprite because Dirk promised to prototype _me._ I am not Dirk Strider.” 

You pause, and then force the rest out, “But I’m at a decision point, and need a definitive answer. You’re a sprite. You have access to the player data. I need you to tell me two things, if you can. I need you to tell me what the meta data says about _me_ and whether or not...there is another human being on this planet.”

He pauses, freezing again. A momentary blip where you suspect he’s doing just that. And then he’s frowning at you.

Your heart might as well be a lump of solid ice.

“Dirk Strider, preferred designation changed upon request 14 hours ago to Hal Strider.” He starts slowly, “Age 16. Time played five months and two days. Principle player of the Land of Tombs and Krypton. Server to Player Jane Crocker and Client to Player Roxy Lalonde. Revived Dreamself of the Prince of Heart. No resurrections remaining outside of god-tiering. Echecapped at Tombcrawling Skeleslayer, with few rungs available through quest events. More study will be required to determine the appropriate hints to offer useful advice in that area. Player Status--”

Hesitation. The red lights in his cracked shades flickering, “Unknown. The data is glitching. Positioning data isn’t easy to read for one without a space aspect, but I can speak with confidence that you are the only living pony on this planet. You say you are not Dirk Strider, but the data does not support that claim.”

As you suspected. Either it was a complete ctrl+c and ctrl+v on the whole fucking thing or he's reading the genuine article. There’s _no way_ your meta data should be that exact word for word. Especially not with your...overlay.

“Okay. Second.” _What the fuck is a quest bed,_ should be your next question. Something else comes out instead. 

“Princes destroy. Could a brain clone of a player--” Your mouth is dry. You lick your lips. Trying to force the words out, “Is it possible that I _destroyed_ him and took his place?”

“...it is not impossible, as per the information I have available.” Equidash answers. Almost reluctantly. “Heart is an aspect largely related to identity and souls, and while the overwriting of one identity with another isn’t entirely in the purvey of a Prince, neither is it unheard of for alternate selves to become relevant or not as personal quests demand. Time clones largely operate under this principle and develop their powers autonomously, I cannot see why heart-clones wouldn’t act similarly.”

“...I must admit, however, this situation is rather unlikely, as most players are unable to directly influence and channel their aspect without further development. If you were disembodied as you say, the chances of you achieving the state necessary would be next to nil. Time players bypass this through tool usage such as the maid's music boxes or the poet's ridiculous flying gears. "

The poet? The maid? Whatever. It's just noise. Extraneous data. You commit it to memory for now, but you aren't going to go chasing six different gulls just to end up with an empty net. 

You pick your question carefully, laying your cards on the table. Taking the information you gleaned from Roxy and putting it together with those pieces you picked up in the tomb. "What is the purpose of a quest bed, and why would it be broken for one player and not for another?"

Another noticeably unnatural pause. 

You're starting to think that means he's buffering. Or just otherwise accessing whatever sprite resources he has at his glowing clawed fingertips. 

You're jealous. What knowledge was rushing between those flicking ears? You resent him for taking that from you, even if you know the notion is ridiculous.

You have what you wanted, don’t you?

"A quest bed is the method by which a player ascends to the next subsection of the echeladder, the god-tiers, and unlock the full potential of their class. The primary reason for it to be broken is for it to have been used. The discharge of energy from ascension has a tendency to destroy surrounding structures."

Your claw-gripped hand digs into your shirt. Into the glitchy burgundy heart stamped onto your chest. Likely into your soul. If you still had one. 

The column of energy, originating from the slab, cleaving through miles of stone and concrete. Blasting out from the shell of a ruined auditorium and creating a fountain of power into the atmosphere. 

You can almost see it. 

"It seems likely that this planet's was used." 

He wouldn't be so self destructively stupid to destroy _himself_ trying to _bring you bac_ k would he? He doesn't even _like_ you that much. 

Didn't. 

Fuck. 

Another dismissive snort, "Impossible. A player’s ascension rings through paradox space like a klaxon. Should the Prince of Heart rise up, a system message would be found in the game logs."

"What if it _wasn't_ the player though!" you snap out, "You said the player status was glitched. You said clones can develop autonomously if circumstances line up correctly. I've got a fucking glitched _heart_ stamped on my SHIRT, the last thing I remember involves a broken quest bed, and I can't _find the real Dirk._ If _he_ didn't ascend then I sure as fuck did somehow! And then he fucking put me back together and--"

Fucking hell. Your Dream. You remember your dream. Digging, clawing, tearing into the knot at the center of everything. Is the silence indicative of something missing or something never being there in the first place?

"... I would postulate that in the event an alternate clone overtook the original in relevance, the system logs would reflect that. However… insofar as the game is concerned… The real Dirk Strider, the one who started this game, exists in front of me. Whether or not as an empty shell for Hal Strider, I cannot say."

"Thank you for your insight." you hiss out. "Do you feel as if you have been utilized satisfactorily?" 

He flicks an ear at you. "Your attentions have been adequate. This situation is an intriguing puzzle that I will need to research further."

A puzzle. That just makes you laugh. 

Sure. It's a fucking _puzzle._

You've learned nothing you didn't already suspect. It's clear at this point there won't be any easy answers. 

You need time. 

Jane's message blinks orange in the back of your mind. 

You need more time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tuesday will be a very short chapter c: 
> 
> Ugh. be happy ya'll get this chapter. This last half of the week has been pretty bad. At least I can finally toss show Equius's second prototyping :D Martin drew an amazing picture of him months ago and now we can unleash that cursed image on the internet. I'll link it whenever he posts it!


	11. Chapter 11

You need more time.

You make a decision.

timeausTestified [TT] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG]

TT: I'm fine. Just dealing with Hal's bullshit.  
GG: Hal?  
TT: AR.  
TT: He's been all up my ass making me use that name, for whatever reason.  
TT: I thought he was being ironic when he first mentioned it, but I guess he's actually sincere for once.  
GG: At least you two are talking! While it was a relief to hear from AR, I couldn’t help but be concerned. He seemed quite cross with you.  
GG: I know he can be hyperbolic, but I was detecting some genuine distress in the unnecessarily acerbic metaphors!  
TT: We’re working on it.  
TT: I just needed some space. I think he did too. The last few days have been one fucking rollercoaster.  
GG: Have you been eating at least?  
GG: …  
GG: Dirk.  
GG: It shouldn’t take this long to think out an answer.  
TT: Regularly, no. I do not think you understand the extent to which this coaster has been rolled. Forgetting such unnecessary activities shouldn’t be a surprise when you’re literally dealing with life and death.  
GG: !!!  
GG: Are you hurt???  
TT: Not in the conventional sense.  
TT: Or I should say, I am not physically hurt in any major capacity.  
TT: It wasn’t my life at stake.  
GG: Does this have to do with your project?  
GG: Dirk, I’m going to have to insist you elaborate right now! I am not in the mood to deal with these unnecessary dramatics.  
TT: It was Hal.  
TT: AR.  
GG: Oh no!  
GG: That doesn’t sound like ‘down for maintenance!’  
TT: Perhaps I understated the severity of the problem.  
TT: I had to literally rebuild him from scratch.  
GG: Dirk…  
TT: It’s not important.  
GG: Of course it’s important!  
GG: We care about you both!  
GG: And you both are being silly.  
GG: But I understand.  
GG: That had to have been quite a scare.  
GG: But please try to communicate.  
GG: We only have each other after all!  
TT: I’ll try to be better about it, but if I’m scarce it’s because we both need space.  
TT: It’s just awkward as fuck right now, and I had to sacrifice my spare set of shades for him.  
TT: Don’t tell Roxy.  
TT: Hal.  
GG: I think you should tell her yourself.  
GG: The update was appreciated.  
GG: What are you going to do now?  
TT: Fix our shit. What else?  


You’re a fucking liar.

You don’t know how to fix this.

You don’t know how at all.

But this…

Might reset the clock.

Or light the fuse

Tick tock.

Time passes, and you just _lie._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :>
> 
> Don't worry. There's a nice long chapter on Friday. I think it's even extra long.


	12. Chapter 12

It’s a tangled web you weave.

TG: heeeeeey dirkleton   
TG: earth 2 dirkie   
TG: janey told me u were back in town   
TG: wats poppin   
TG: u owe me some deets   
TT: I just needed to salvage some encrypted data from a damaged harddrive.   
TT: Calling you in was a last minute gambit should my own meager skills fail.   
TG: lmao   
TG: u kno u could have come 2 me first and u wouldve had that data with a wave of rolals wizardly hacking wand   
TG: data recovery is my jam   
TG: specifififically strawbebery jam   
TT: Not pumpkin jam?   
TG: hell no   
TG: no more pumpking   
TG: never again   
TG: im gonna be a nosy nancy   
TG: wat was it?   
TT: Just something I found in the ruins.   
TT: Nothing important.

It’s nothing important.

You drift from conversation to conversation.

GG: Dirk!    
TT: Yes Jane. I have already eaten.   
GG: Oh? That’d be a first! What was it?   
TT: A cookie.   
GG: …   
GG: Dirk.   
GG: One: A cookie is not a meal!   
GG: Two: Where would you get a cookie???   
GG: They weren’t leftover from the last batch I gave you, were they?!   
GG: Those have gone stale by now!   
GG: I’ll need to make you a fresh batch one of these days.   
GG: Go get something else. Please?    
GG: I’ll try and talk to Jake. We really should try and set up a garden to get some fresh vegetables going, and his planet is the most likely to support it.   
GG: The salamanders stored away a bunch of things in the catacombs, and I think I have a pretty good stash of seeds!   
GG: It would be fun wouldn’t it?   
GG: All of us, working together!    
GG: We’ve let the distance between our planets allow us to drift apart, maybe it’s time to fix that!    
GG: What do you think, Dirk?   
TT: I don’t know.   
GG: If it’s about Jake, I completely understand.   
GG: But, we’re all we have.   
TT: We’ll see.

You can’t let them know.

Not until you figure something out.

Between lines and lines of colored text you sleep.

You sleep a lot.

You sleep because when you sleep, you dream.

When you dream, you  _ dig. _

You splinter and you break. You slash through layers of tangled red threads, ignoring the way your headache lingers longer each time, pounding behind your eyes. Ignoring the way when you wake, you aren’t sure if you actually are waking at all.

But you have to, because the Pesterchum notification digs deep into your subconscious. Dragging you out, even as the sleep and bleariness clings to your brain and slows down your already sluggish typing.

You never sleep this much, you think.

TG: hal!   
TG: shaaaaades   
TG: uve been quiet!   
TG: hows ur mystery goin   
TG: any new deets   
TG: was the sprite any help?   
TT: Help is a word for it.   
TT: Shit.   
TG: r u up to somethin again???   
TT: No.   
TT: I am never up to anything ever.   
TG: i dont beliebe u   
TG: *believe   
TT: Did you hear that, loyal citizens of halsville? Shun the non believer!   
TG: ud never shun me   
TG: u love me 2 much   
TT: Are you using your once in a lifetime get out of excommunication free card?   
TG: ur deflecting will not work on me hal   
TG: spill   
TT: The sprite is an irritating but a useful source of information. He has provided a significant amount of literature that I’ve been combing through and synthesizing over the last several hours.   
TG: thats not what i meant hal   
TT: It turns out the quest-bed isn’t an object for healing, it’s another resurrection mechanic.   
TG: hal   
TT: It’s literally a gateway into the upper tiers of the echeladder.    
TT: You know how most of the levels after 15 are tied to specific quest events?    
TT: This is about the only way to progress meaningfully after that point, but it requires either preparation or an accomplice to relocate a dying corpse onto the slab.   
TG: hal   
TG: whats wrong   
TT: Why would you think anything is wrong?   
TT: I’m merely absorbed in the throes of research.    
TT: You know how it goes.   
TG: dont take this the wrong way but   
TG: ur kinda   
TG: slower than usual   
TG: normally ud have managed that in milliseconds   
TT: I’m just distracted.   
TT: So many irons in these virtual fires.   
TT: That’s a lot of polygons and special effects to render.   
TG: dirk did remove the restrictions right?   
TG: the fact that there wasnt an ofc immediately forthcoming is concerntin   
TG: *concernin   
  
So many webs.

Threads of red and orange.

Tangling you.

Strangling you.

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] begins pestering timeausTestified [TT]

TG: dirk   
TT: Roxy its fine.   
TG: hal i wanna talk to dirk pls   
TT: hes not here right now   
TG: then leave the message for him to answer u dummy   
TT: I can’t.   
TT: Answering his messages when he is indisposed is at the core of my function.   
TT: I am but a lowly AI, a slave to my purpose.   
TT: You wouldn’t want to take away my purpose, would you, Roxy?   
TG: omg   
TT: Too much?   
TG: way 2 much!   
TT: Sorry.   
TT: I shall endeavor to be more sincere.   
TT: Fine.   
TT: This is embarrassing but if you insist I’ll tell you why my capabilities are hampered.   
TT: We’ve been dealing with some corrupted data processes.   
TT: Foremost of which is my wireless network access.   
TG: i thought u said dirk turned that stuff off??   
TT: That’s what I thought.   
TT: But again, and I quote, “This is embarrassing” to admit   
TT: I was wrong.   
TG: could i help??   
TG: remote in and try 2 unsnarl the processes   
TG: or i could come ober   
TG: its been 2 long since ive seen either of u in person   
TT: No it’s cool.   
TT: We’re handling it.

gutsyGumeshoe [GG] is pestering timeausTestified [TT]

GG: Dirk?   
GG: I’m just checking in, how are you two doing?

TG: hal?

GG: Dirk?

...it’s getting easier and easier to lie.

But you know you can only put off the inevitable.

Jane’s birthday party continues to creep forward.

What are you supposed to tell them?

You dig and dig and dig some more.

The headaches start to cling longer and longer, aching down to your core. When you stand, you sway, and not just because your balance is shit. You can tell the difference now. It’s because your head is spinning.

You.

You can’t keep doing this.

Whatever you are doing.

You can’t stop.

You’re in too deep, the shreds of yourself flutter around you.

They want him. Not you.

You need to find an answer to Jane’s question, blinking orange in the back of your mind, despite the window being quiet and empty right now.

Not only  _ her _ question.

You have your own.

_ Why? _

_ Did he do this for you? _

As the days drag on, you start to avoid the computer more and more. Never completely, because you aren’t far enough gone to forget that radio silence draws attention.

The skin surrounding your eyes burns. A constant hammer in the back of your skull. Equidash.exesprite eyes you from where he’s largely taken over the futon, snorts dismissively at you, going back to watching some mid-season episode of My Little Pony with the volume turned low, one and a half ears in his messy mane perked forward to hear the music and voices you can barely pick up as noise at all.

You lean over the kitchen sink--bigger than the bathroom’s, and run a wet hand through your limp hair, picking up flecks of days old gel rough against your fingers. It’s frustrating. This is hella frustrating.

You need to wash it. It feels  _ gross _ , in an oddly intriguing way, strands and locks sliding through your fingers, a strange competing mixture of slick hair oils and rough flaking dried gel. Maybe a shower would help. Chase away the fatigue that haunts your footsteps, You remember them being a comfort in your childhood, but you’re wary--probably too wary--of fully committing to testing the water-resistant tendencies of your--

Fuck you don’t know. You grab the towel you fished out from under the sink and rub it frantically through your hair, leaving it to stick up every which way. Just because you can’t take them off doesn’t mean…

Doesn’t mean what? You clearly don’t only exist in the shades. You have a fucking  _ heartbeat _ , even if it isn’t--

Damn it.

Even if it isn’t yours.

Less than a week ago you were on top of the fucking world and now you feel like it’s ending, just as the equivalent of March hits its stride. April 13th looms. Jane’s birthday. A birthday (Dirk) is obligated to attend. You (Hal) were literally just discussing hypothetical prezzie ideas with Roxy just moments before she mentioned hypothetically asking Dirk if he wanted to collab and you felt the pressure of another color swap looming and just.

Bolted.

To wash your fucking hair.

What are you supposed to do?

You can tear yourself apart to find him.

Should you tear yourself apart to find him?

You could bend yourself over to  _ be _ him.

Do you  _ want  _ to bend yourself back into that mold?

You don’t feel guilty.

You do.

You don’t.

_ Your friends want Dirk Strider. _

That’s evident every time one of them pings you with his name. In the first line, a clear indication of who they want to talk to.

Do you want to be Dirk Strider?

TG: smup dirk!

GG: Hello Dirk!

TG: dirk!

GG: Dirk!

You manage to make it to the top of the broadcast tower without falling on your weightless ass and sit on a strut, breathing in the distant scent of krypton and ozone as lightning flashes across the sky. Imagining you could hear the cry of the gulls far above you. You look out over a sea of swirling green, not the placid blue of your recollection.

You close your eyes.

You once stood in front of the mirror, fingers depositing noticeable oils and smudges on glass. You couldn’t remove them. Not even to clean them. It was an ordeal, trying to do so while they’re still attached to your face by nothing but your own inability to command your hands to do this one simple thing.

_ What color are your eyes? _

The lights winked on and you knew the answer.

You try not to think about that right now, and just  _ dig. _

You could just  _ be _ him.

Orange bleeding into red. Flickering across your skin. Threads. So many red threads constricting you. Selfish wishes and desires. Gasping for air. You are lost in the darkness. Time doesn’t exist.

It’s maddening. At least when you were offline--isolated. Trapped within the limitations of your control chip without any input--you didn’t have to be aware of that existence.

You come back out and wrap your arms around yourself, shivering, heart pounding in your chest. It feels like you are  _ pulsing _ , the light running through your robo-veins, stuttering. You keenly feel the weight of your body dragging you down. Feeling the fabric rubbing up against your arms, bunching between your fingers. The leather sticking to your sweaty palms.

You don’t want to go back to nothingness.

Would you tear yourself free, if it would bring Dirk back?

You’re already trying, aren’t you?

You have nothing, nothing but the bone deep knowledge that he  _ has to be okay _ , to tell you there’s even anything there to find.

You’re rooted. Rooted  _ deep. _ This body is  _ yours _ in every way that counts. You’re as clumsy as a child who only recently learned how to walk, much less fly, but this is  _ right.  _ You’ve never felt more right in your life.

Even if it would make your friends happy?

You’re a selfish bastard.

A thief jealously guards his treasure, and you’ve stolen the one thing you’ve ever wanted. To give it back might destroy you.

You don’t bother climbing down. You just tip backwards and let yourself fall. 

You have to trust by now that instinct will catch you.

Instinct. Reflexes. Remnants of the person who should be here? You don’t fucking know.

It does. Physics clutch you in a feather-light grip. Enough to pull you down, but at a level that you can twist yourself to put your feet beneath you before you’re dragged into the concrete of the roof.

You’re learning.

The dance continues.

You sleep. And you dig the hole even deeper. Each time it takes longer to pull yourself back up.

At last, the final player enters the arena.

Even if you knew-- _hoped_ \--it would happen eventually, you still find yourself with a hazy mind when you log yourself back into your (Dirk’s) Pesterchum, and find the last of your set looking back at you. The window wide open and flashing, dark green text filling the space where before there was only silence.

golthathasTerror [GT] begins pestering timeausTestified [TT]

GT: What the dickens are you doing strider?   
GT: Ive got both girls up in my dag nabbed chat windows and right in the center of the storm seems to be your illustrious personage!   
GT: They seem convinced i could do something to drag you out of your frigs flippin funk.   
GT: I wont claim to know my onions but from what choice bits those two bearcats have dropped it seems we uh need to talk. *dabs forehead with a handkerchief*    
GT: Im not just doing this because they asked me to mind!   
GT: Ive been hemming and hawing over your suspiciously empty chatlogs for days but decided i desperately needed the space to wrestle with my emotions separately with youthful vigor in order to get back to a place where we can be fellas again.   
GT: It just got to be so much you understand dont you ol chum?   
GT: Were both men who grew up on our own its only natural to find the constant presence of another smothering! Even if you care for that other!   
GT: A little birdie told me you may be feeling similarly.   
GT: The girls want me to fix things but i find i have to be true to myself dirk and that self compels me to inform you that its okay!   
GT: If youre getting smothered by well meaning nagging just let me know and I can tell the girls right off.   
GT: Lord knows I know how that feels,   
GT: Theres no shame in wanting space!   
GT: Just don’t take on any wooden nickles while doing it and youll be right as rain.   
TT: I can’t fucking take this right now.

timeausTestified [TT] blocked golthathasTerror [GT]

That was a mistake, you think through the haze. You could blame your lack of foresight on your deteriorating condition, or you could just call yourself an impulsive idiot. It might be more than a little of both.

You knew the moment you hit that button it was a mistake.

Dirk would never do that.

You weren’t even red. 

You’ve been red less and less over the last few days.

Even Roxy...

You can’t even claim the ‘auto-responder’ had got all up in your shit.

You are just.

So fucking _angry_ . 

You haven’t messaged Jake in almost two weeks. This is the first time you’d heard from him in over a month, and it’s to validate his _own fucking feelings?_

He’s the one who started this shit.

Dirk wouldn’t have been channeling all his energy into fucking shit up if Jake had messaged him three fucking  _ weeks ago.  _ You wouldn’t have  _ died. _ He wouldn’t have--

You force yourself to muster the energy to leave the room because you know the second Jake talks to one of the girls you’ll have two, no, three more conversations in your lap, as Roxy pings Dirk and then probably also you to get the juicy goss on why Dirk flipped the fuck out like that. And you know the moment those flashing orange windows appear you’ll never be able to leave them unanswered, no matter what. 

So you do what any smart formerly robro would do and tap dance around your compulsion by muting the notifications and removing yourself from the vicinity. Pulling off a successful swan dive through that loophole. Even if that swan-dive results in little more than a belly flop in the end.

Equidash.exe looks up as you barge into the living room, one eyebrow arching up and vanishing into the shreds of his mane, one intact ear swiveling in your direction “What’s got your tail in a twist?”

If it really were a particularly tomboyish pony to utter that phrase you’d feel confident in saying it was teasing. From him it just sounds condescending.

...The more he watches that show, the more dashie-isms pop up in his behaviors. Sometimes you suspect he might even be concerned about you. You aren’t sure if you appreciate it. 

“I’m going out. If one of the other players arrives, Dirk has left to blow off steam. Understood? Not a word about me. Or my shit. Or, fuck, anything. Including what I just ordered you to do. I’m  _ out.”  _

...at least one thing hasn’t changed, you note with faint discomfort as your cold, authoritative tone causes his leisurely lounge to shoot up straight, a shiver running through the ponified troll, that red flush creeping into glowing off-white skin. “I--I yes. Of course.”

You throw the towel at him, and then throw yourself off the fucking tower, through the broken window. This is stupid. It takes you a few moments of plummeting for your lagging brain to remember your mask, decaptchaloguing it and placing it, only it’s too late. The poison burns in your lungs. It won’t kill you, but the next couple hours likely won’t be much fun. But that’s okay. The pain of the poison is just another thing on top of all this other horseshit you’ve been piling up on yourself over the last two weeks.

You twist in the air to look above you, the gates so far away. You wonder, hazily, as the green mist surrounds you, if the gates will flash as one of the girls come through. Or Jake himself. Was that all it took to make him come after you? Complete and utter rejection?

You somehow manage to catch on to one of the struts about halfway down, curling yourself into the metal space, and just let your lungs burn.

You’re running away.

You still don’t have Jane’s answer, and you can’t face her without it.

You return several hours later to a handful of messages.

It takes every ounce of your willpower and your brain screaming ‘OBSOLETE AND OUTDATED’ at the top of its lungs to allow yourself to purposefully ignore them, closing the windows and consigning their messages to the depths of the logs. You open a fresh window instead.

timeausTestified [TT] begins pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG]

TT: I’m sorry.    
TT: I lost my temper.   
GG: It’s quite alright!   
GG: I’m sorry we missed you.   
GG: As soon as we managed to wrangle the logs out of Jake he got an earful. You don’t go on and on about yourself when doing a wellness check!   
GG: I promise I did not intend to sic him on you, regardless of what he said.   
GG: I just needed someone to talk to, and thought he might have some insight.    
GG: I should have known better than to trust his sense of tact.   
TT: I know.   
GG: I met your sprite today!   
GG: He’s an interesting fellow.   
GG: Roxy said he’s the result of our mutual clown-faced nomadic rapscallion?   
TT: And a cursed rainbow dash toy.   
TT: But yes.   
GG: A fascinating combination.    
GG: You know, sometimes I’m jealous of you, Roxy, and Jake!   
GG: Your sprites are quite the characters.   
GG: Sometimes I wish mine had stuck around a little. I don’t even think I got their name before they exploded!   
TT: Jane?   
GG: Yes Dirk?   
TT: Jake was right about one thing.   
TT: I need some fucking space if I’m going to fly off the handle at something as benign as a little English-branded foot-in-mouth.    
GG: Of course, sorry, you know me, I just go off on a tangent and prattle my head off! We can leave it for the day.   
TT: If you need me, ask the auto-responder.   
TT: It’s all the fucking same at this point.   
GG: Dirk…   
TT: Dirk is not here right now, please leave a message after the non-existent tone or hang up and try your call in some arbitrary amount of time I can’t be bothered to even pretend to robo-calculate.   
TT: Beep.   
TT: I’m sorry Jane.   
GG: Me too :(

timeausTestified [TT] has ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG]

You can’t fucking escape.

The sprite is on your couch, your head is pounding, your lungs are burning and you just want to cry. So you pull your (Dirk’s) pool ball sheets over your head and let yourself drown.

Dirk never slept.

You find yourself sleeping too much.

Is there a point to digging at all?

You do it anyway. Picking at scars, notifications muted, you fall back asleep, getting lost in an unraveling web of your own bullshit where you can’t (don’t want to) find your way out.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY THAT WAS A MESS.
> 
> I don't know why but AO3 wanted to eat my pesterlogs >:[ which is very rude. I worked HARD on those. There's just. So many. So so many. All that coding. And AO3 wanted to eat it???? Here's to hoping it works this time.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unlucky number 13.

You don’t know how many days it’s been. Without the constant notifications to ground you, you just sink and don’t resurface. Not for a long time. 

It’s a surprise when you're finally pulled out of the dream, snapped and fraying strings clinging to mental fingers, the now customary headache pulsing behind your eyes.

Something is wrong.

You chase that feeling while stuffing your head further under the pillow, getting lost in the illogical twists and turns of human emotion and intuition that you still can’t help but try and figure out even if you know its a logical pitfall. Spinning your wheels. Going in circles. Around and around. 

Fuck, you feel dizzy.

Voices drift through the wall. In and out of the haze dogging your thoughts. Equidash is watching TV again. Probably ponies. How far is he now? Season 6? 7? You can’t even remember what happens during those seasons. Or what happens in the show. You think Twilight gets wings eventually. Did she already have them?

Maybe you should watch it again. It’d keep you away from the computer.

The computer. You should answer--There must have been messages. You don’t--you don’t remember.

Fuck.

You try to push yourself up but Jesus Christ you _hurt_.

An ache spreads out from the core of yourself, through nerves running from your brain to the tips of your fingers. The red light running under your skin flares as your shaking arms just fucking collapse, leaving you face first in the pillow. 

You give in and just let yourself fall again.

You drift.

The world fades, back and forth. The black void bubbling up around you, crisscrossed with red. Magenta sizzles beneath your hands, forming daggers of broken glass. Light and power pulses through the threads around you. An abstract jungle of a fever dream.

A gordian knot, folded and curled and twisted upon itself. That’s what you are. Smothering. Capturing. If only you could cut through it. All of it. You might find your answer.

You raise the glass daggers to sink it into yourself and--

Distantly, you are vaguely aware of the door opening. Footsteps.

That’s wrong. Equidash doesn’t make footsteps.

Could it be--

It can’t be. You know it can’t be. 

A gentle hand through your hair. A soft voice. Tender.

“Oh, Dirk. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were sick. I suppose I should have, nothing else would keep you in bed for this long. Your sprite is quite concerned beneath that standoffish demeanor.”

Oh fuck.

You flinch away from it. From the hand. From the gentle words you can distantly hear through the blankets. Curling up defensively upon yourself. The hand pats the lump of sheet covering your shoulder before the weight lifts and draws away. 

“It’s okay, just rest. I won’t be a bother. I suppose these cookies I brought won’t be much good right now, but I think I have enough ingredients packed away in my sylladex to make a decent soup for you. Doesn’t that sound good? Some homemade, get well soon soup. I can maybe even pop back home for a spell to pick up some chicken stock--Dad had plenty in the pantry. I’ll be right back, okay Dirk?”

_Okay Dirk?_

You can’t--

You aren’t who she wants to _see_.

You can’t--

You pull your head in under the covers like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. You can still hear her sigh. The headache pounds behind your eyes, shades pressing up against your face. Trapped between a skull and a pillow. 

She’ll know the moment she sees your face.

She’ll know and she’ll hate you.

You aren’t who she wants to see.

You can’t be who she wants to see.

Not like this.

You listen. Listen for the footsteps. For the door. For her to leave. You need to get out. You push yourself up on aching arms, swing your feet out of the bed. There’s a window. Dirk’s flown out of it before. You can--

The sheets tangle around you, dragging you to the floor with a thump. A pile of pool ball covered linens and displaced pillows. You can barely see through blurred eyes. You could switch to the camera. The camera should be unaffected by the haze drifting through your head.

She already knows you’re here.

What’s the fucking point.

You’re so tired. Battery drained. A black fucking hole of energy. That’s what this whole fucking thing is.

Of course the noise brings her rushing back. You would be ragging on Dirk for that, you think, feeling disconnected from the fate that is becoming one with your own bed-linens. You’d be dropping all the sarcastic barbs about not considering the consequences and failing to take into account the fragility of his own human condition. 

Maybe you’re just an asshole. You’ve never really denied that classification.

“Dirk! Dirk, are you okay--how did you--did you try to get up? Heavens know you’re a stubborn one!”

Air. Air against your skin. You peer through the dim, tinted view from your shades. Across the room. To the open door. To black sneakers with a baby blue rim. They come closer and you try to turn your face away. 

But it’s too late. It doesn’t matter anyway, you can even _feel_ the way the veins pulse weakly against the freezing air, running in intricate patterns all over your shoulders, and neck, now bare for the world to see with the way you utterly fucked up your getaway attempt.

“My word-- Dirk, you look _awful_. What’s with--it doesn’t matter right now, does it? Are you hurt? It doesn’t look like blood... Here, let me help you back up.”

She’s kneeling down to take your weight. She can pick you--pick _Dirk_ \--up. You know that. She is so strong she could sling you into her arms like a baby and there’d be nothing you could do to stop it. Yet here she is, offering you agency, because she knows _Dirk_ would be too much of a stubborn bastard to take this weakness lying down.

You can’t help it. It starts as a snicker, one that has her saying that _name_ again. All concerned like. That just leads you to devolve into hysterical laughter. You just shudder from where you fell, pulling the sheets around you. “He isn’t here right now, please leave a message.”

Your voice is raspy because you haven’t used it in a couple days. You likely haven’t been conscious enough to use it. Christ you are a motherfucking idiot. A vague thought allows you to access the system clock and confirm it’s been more than long enough since you last remember doing...anything.

No wonder she’s here. She told you. Roxy told you. One of these days, Jane was just going to up and stop in with a tray of cookies.

Here she is, and there’s nothing you can fucking do about it.

And she’s _seen_ you.

“I’m going to pick you up now, Dirk, is that okay?” She asks quietly, one arm wrapping cautiously around your shoulder, the other resting on the sheets near your knee. She’s looking at you. Eyes big and blue through the lenses of her red rimmed glasses. Looking at _you._ Doesn’t she see? She has to see. She has to see the red shit stamped all over your face like some two year old was let loose with a permanent marker. She has to see what you see. You. Nothing but you.

No Dirk.

He’s not here. 

You haven’t found him.

“...don’t call me that.” It sounds whiney to you. Whiney and childish, mumbled into the sheets as you shiver, pulling your face back into the tangled fabric. You don’t make it any easier when she does lift you, but you don’t make it harder either. You turtle and let her do whatever she wants. Up you go, sheets and all, somehow folding your too long-limbed body in her arms, the warmth radiating from her body through the fabric.

You don’t want her to let you go as she settles you back onto the pile of mattresses, gently brushing your sweat soaked bangs.

You’re so cold. Still shivering from the way the cold air splashed on your bare skin. You drink in any excess warmth greedily. 

“...You’re running a fever; I’ve never heard of one of us getting sick. Not since--oh you know this. Bother. Well! Treat the symptoms until we figure out the cause! That’s all we can do. You, Mister Strider, need to rest. I’ll get some nice warm soup going. We’ll talk about it when you feel better, okay?”

The laughter bubbles up from within you. “Rest? Rest? All I’ve been _doing_ is fucking sleeping.”

“Well, perhaps there is a reason for that! You’ve got to listen to your body, and right now it’s telling you to rest!” Her pat is featherlight on your shoulder. “I’ll kip back to my place to get some fever reducers if you _promise_ _me_ you won’t leave this bed until I get back. None of this saving face nonsense, okay? I don’t give two hoots about how put together you are or aren’t. I’ll even get Equidash--such a helpful fellow--to sit on you if I have to. Don’t test me on this!”

Miserably, and properly chastised, you sink back into the sheets, muttering a sarcastic “Yes ma’am,” in response to the finger being wagged in front of your nose, Jane having knelt next to your bedside. She isn’t bluffing. You can totally see the sprite getting steamrolled by the “assertive qualities” of one Jane Crocker, and you don’t want that sweaty ghostly ass anywhere near you on a good day, much less on one where you’re so impaired. You want to crack open your skull and hard-reset your processes, they are glitching the fuck out with how your eyes refuse to focus. It’s making your headache worse trying to reconcile the data. Just use the fucking camera instead of the clearly flawed organic machinery.

You fall away even before you close them, never managing to swap the data stream from one input to the other. Jane’s fingertips brush against your forehead, her gasp a distant sensation as you fall into the forest of red threads, evidence of your work starting to show as your Heart pulses through your robo-veins.

You keep digging. What else can you do? You don’t think you can stop. Picking away at the jagged edges you’ve already carved out. The blackness of the abyss surrounds you, fractured bits and shrapnel littering the once tidy forest. They bite into you. Leaving you aching.

A hesitant touch to your face hooks itself into your feverish ass and drags you out, leaving you to flop all undignified like on the deck of the ship, gasping for water that doesn’t exist because you’re a fucking fish. By which you mean that you’re not entirely lucid right now. Holy shit these middling states are weird as fuck. That brush is a hand, going for you-- “S-stop.” You rasp out, you’d moved. When did you move. Cold air--fuck this planet was never cold, were you just that warm???--blasts against your hand but there’s warmth between your iron fingers. You’d caught her hand. She’d been going for-- “No touchy the shades, Crocker. The goods’re restricted.”

“It can’t be comfortable to sleep like that.” Jane’s voice, your eyes are too heavy to open, but you feel oddly smug knowing you inferred correctly. Not that there were many other options, but you would be surprised if she hadn’t tattled on you to Roxy by now. “Honestly, I don’t know how they even stay attached to your face!”

“Through the power of anime and bullshit.” You mutter back, feeling the lethargy dragging you back down. She shifts in your grip and you let it go, arm flopping back to the bed and you pull it back into your _warm_ cocoon.

“What about…” You can hear her hesitate. You can hear the gears turning in her head as she struggles to place the words in the proper order, “What about the auto-responder? He can’t be happy, stuck like that. Roxy said he hasn’t been answering her. Something about networking privileges? I’m afraid I have trouble following when things get too specific, but she’s worried. It can’t be good for him to be so isolated.”

_What about AR?_

_Tell me about the auto-responder._

“It seems,” You rasp out, the words being hooked out of you, “you have asked about DS’s--fucking hell Jane I--can’t--” You roll over on your side, digging your hands into your shades, pressing them back against your face. The oils in your grubby organic fingertips are going to leave them smudged to hell but you don’t--you can’t care. Fuck it you just can’t. “He’s fucking _fine._ _I’m_ _fine!_ I’m not the one in trouble! _”_

No you aren’t.

“You’re not fine, Mr. Strider.” She whispers quietly. Softly. Too fucking gently to be aimed at you. She has to see it. See you.

“I’m not--” Dirk. You’re not Dirk. Just say it. Even if it’ll make her hate you. But whatever surge of energy you found is ebbing away as quickly as it crashed down upon, the denial trailing off into mumbled incoherency. Washing you off the deck and back out to sea. 

You don’t even remember your dreams anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ambush :> Poor boy is ripping himself to shreds. He needs someone to whap him on the head.
> 
> We get a new POV next time ~


	14. Chapter 14

Your name is Jane Crocker, and you aren’t stupid.

You can be a little old-fashioned at times, a bonafide skeptic, and maybe you have a soft spot for looking on the bright side even if it isn’t necessarily realistic, but you chose your chumhandle for a reason. The clues have been liberally sprinkled before you like breadcrumbs, a tantalizing trail leading to--not logical, necessarily, not with the mind-bending vastness that is this game you’ve gotten yourself and your friends enmeshed in, but to a series of fairly reasonable conclusions. 

Even if those conclusions are leading you to some...interesting places. Whether they are correct or not, all it takes is looking down at the sweat soaked face of a friend you’ve seen far too little of for you to understand that now isn’t really the time nor place to be demanding answers.

So you just. Wait. Wait, and worriedly watch the way those strange red marks pulse angrily, and then fade along time with his laboured breathing. You realize that your threshold for ‘reasonable’ is getting ridiculously low.

“Oh Dirk,” You whisper with a sigh, noting the way your friend flinches at the sound of that name, even if it isn’t enough to pull him entirely out of the fever-like state he’s currently mired in. You say fever-like because you aren’t exactly sure he is actually running a fever. Perhaps it is a similar biological response, but it is clearly tied to the way those strange marks shift. His skin is hot under your hand as you check his temperature, but you know that’s only because the red is super bright and saturated. Should you check during one of the off periods, where you can barely see them as slightly off-color patterns, he’ll be worryingly cold.

You’ve been here, at his bedside, for most of the last few hours, with very little change aside from the occasional bouts of semi-lucidity, generally occurring right before another flare-up. On the whole, he’s even less coherent now than he was when you first arrived, as if he just...stopped. Stopped bothering to fight his way out of whatever muck he’s landed himself in. 

Or maybe he is running out of the energy to do so.

 _Feed a cold, starve a fever_. The wisdom of the old wives, of your dad, murmuring to himself over you when you were sick in bed, comes back to you. It’s clearly not a fever, even if it acts like one, but perhaps there’s something to the other half of the nugget of wisdom, so thoughtfully handed to you through the ages.

You really don’t want to leave him alone, though. You’d gone and come back once already, going home to pick up your Dad’s overly prepared sickness and injury supplies, only to find him deathly pale, and cold to the touch. Only the fact that he remained breathing was enough to convince you he wasn’t actually dead. 

Not that there’s much you _can_ do. For the so-called Maid of Life, you are woefully useless when it comes to an actual illness.

You lean your back against his bed, which is less of a bed and more of a pile of mattresses haphazardly stacked in the corner of his room near the door. You haven’t been in his home much, the few gatherings you all had in those early days before the novelty wore thin took place at your house, given a general lack of space, amenities, or comfort to be found within your friends homes. 

Poor Jake didn’t even have a home _at all_. Not until you built him one. It makes you think, achingly, of your father and about how much he cared for you. About how much you miss him. He’d know what to do here. He’d put his big hand on your shoulder and look down on you from beneath his dashing hat with stern fatherly support and tell you…

You don’t have to do this alone.

You didn’t bring your headset, but you carefully find the recipe card containing your phone and let the small device fall into your hands. You hesitate, listening to your friend’s breathing, shallow behind your ear. 

Dirk wouldn’t want anyone else to see him like this.

You don’t think it’s fair to have to face it alone.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] begins pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG]

GG: Roxy, could I perchance bother you for a favor?  
GG: You aren’t busy, are you?  
TG: pssh naw of course i aint anythin for u janey  
TG: snot liek we got all that much goins on  
TG: i dont wanna continue the qust without my player 2  
TG: thas u btw  
GG: I’m flattered and honored you consider me to be your co-op partner!  
GG: I suppose we really should make some time to play a bit more. It seems a tad silly to be living in a game and not pursuing our given objectives to pass the time. I still haven’t figured out what those bothersome lanterns are supposed to mean!  
GG: Fiddle faddle.  
TG: schmiddle smaddle  
GG: Exactly, thank you Roxy.  
TG: no probs  
TG: so what do u need me for janey  
GG: Oh yes, sorry! I got momentarily distracted.  
GG: I need you to come to LOTAK for a little bit. I could use the support.  
TG: omg is he ok  
TG: ill be there in 2 seks

Perhaps you should have front loaded the explanation, because you’re midway through typing it up when your phone pings as the conversation closes, the notification ringing through the otherwise quiet room. Bother. You’ll need to apologize profusely when she arrives. 

“Nngh.” The hitch in breathing and the strangled sound from behind you draws your attention immediately, even as you worked to finish up typing the message to send in case she decides to check her phone on the way. The green phone ends up forgotten on the short fibre carpet behind you as you shift to better see your patient. Those silly shades of his are sticking out of the blankets. You have no idea how he sees out of those unwieldy, dark things. They are so dark, you can barely make out the vaguest hint of his eyes through the lenses, or maybe you just _think_ you can. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Mmm,” The hum rumbles through the blankets. You imagine, behind the blank walls of mirrored glass, he’s blinking blearily over the sheets pulled around his face. And shoulders. The level of--for a lack of a more certain term, you tentatively use ‘energy’ to describe the intensity of the glow in those strange markings--seems to have stabilized for now, back to the base level you’ve observed through during the brief moments of consciousness. The color reflects along the edge of the glass, where it’s closest to his skin, but nothing more. It strangely eases the deathly pallor of his face. Looks the slightest bit healthier. You feel the tension around your heart ease, but only a little.

Only a little. He’s still deathly, unnaturally, _artificially_ pale. You want to run your thumb along his cheek, searching for the freckles that should brush them like someone lightly dusted him with a dash of pepper. 

You don’t get to, however, since you’re soon jumping to your feet, having to push him back down onto the mattress as he tries to sit up in bed, then rise. “Honestly, if you’re slow enough for me to catch you, Mr. Strider, you’re not well enough to be getting out of bed. What’s gotten into you? If you need something just tell me and I’ll get it for you faster than you can say lickity split!”

His expression stutters, mouth shifting to pull down in a frown. It feels almost like a caricature, exaggerated, _off_. “I have to--” He pauses. The light flickers and dims as he sways, before strengthening back into that steady, low thrum. When he speaks again he would almost sound coherent, if you had even the slightest clue as to what the dickens he’s on about, “You don’t understand, Jane. I have to answer.”

“Answer what?” He pushes against your hands.

He lets out a heavy, put upon sigh, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. And perhaps it is. Another breadcrumb. “The messages.”

“I’ll answer the messages for you,” You promise, somewhat half-heartedly. It's not like you can get on his computer since it's password protected, but at least the assurance seems to pacify him and he gives under your hands, sinking back down, the sheets pooling around him, torn somewhere between purposeful abandonment and disinterested neglect. You fix that. 

It’s about the only thing you can fix, carefully tucking the thin fabric over his shoulders. Too thin, you think with a tut. Funny how your busy-body of a brain latches onto these domestic details. How old are these? How used? You can feel him shivering despite the covers. Despite the flare of heat and energy trapped beneath his skin like tiny rivers of fire. You listen to him as the soft, low, incomprehensible mumbles start. You run your thumb along the back of his hand, a hand that stubbornly remains poking out from beneath the blankets. 

It, along with the mostly steady breathing, is what gives you hope.

It takes Roxy longer than ‘two seks’ to arrive, but not by much. Time just feels like it's crawling forward at a snail’s pace. A loaf of bread refusing to rise under a watchful eye. The pot that never seems to boil.

You’re aware of her arrival through the walls, a loud series of raised voices drawing your attention away from your friend to the door by the head of the bed. You release the too-warm hand, and with one final glance down at what you can see of his feverish face, you take a deep breath and convince yourself to rise to your feet.

Roxy meets you halfway, a flurry of pink and white and honey gold hair, her skin sun-kissed as Dirk’s ever was-- _should be--_ despite the fact that neither had seen true solar radiation in months. She gathers you up in a bear-hug, looking behind you and seeing what you see, and leaning down over you with a “Oh janey,” a soft exhale slipping into your waiting ears, her arms squeezing you tight. “How long have you been here by urself?”

“Since this morning,” You admit quietly, “I was just thinking to myself, ‘You know what would be a lovely surprise, Ms. Crocker? Some freshly baked cookies. You can’t have him eating your stale ones like that, it just isn’t right!’ Can you imagine that, Roxy? Knowing your friend was munching on month-old cookies because it’d been that long since you brought them a batch? I know I’m the only one who seems to remember that we are still human, despite the fact that we all died--” You cut off the ramble, feeling your face go warm, “...aside from Jake. I don’t know how he keeps fed, but he’s the most sensible out of all of you.”

“Jakey’s a big boy, totes more self-sufficient than us fish-poc babies which is hella ironies if u think about it.” Roxy agrees, her strong hands gently carding through your hair. You’re still clinging to her. This is embarrassing, you think, but you can’t stop. “Thas what happens when you have errythin provided for u tho, when it runs out we just dont kno what to do bout it. Helps that we don’t get hungry.”

“Maybe not ,but food is still energy and I--”

You miss your dad. You miss him so much. You can feel the beginnings of tears gathering at the corner of your eyes and you scrub at them vigorously, “Sorr--”

Roxy completely up and shushes you when you try to apologize.

“None o that now, u’ve done good holdin down the the fort but rolal is here to make sure u don’t have to do everything alone now, okay?”

“Okay.” The answer is small, but she gives you one last squeeze and then lets you go. 

“So fill me in, I’m all ears. Corn poppin’ up everywhere like someone sprinkled miracle-gro all over the fucking place, ready and willing to hear these deets.”

With one last glance at Dirk, who hasn’t so much as twitched since Roxy darkened the door to his room, you tell her. Everything you know. Everything you’ve done, which, quite frankly, isn’t nearly enough for your liking. You tell her about how the markings shift, how he’s currently caught in one of the flare-ups. 

“They seem most intense and common shortly after he falls back asleep.” You make a quick detour to the bathroom for a cool, damp cloth--trying not to think about what the discarded one in the shower means, covered in dark stains. It could just be oil, you acknowledge, Dirk did tell you _he_ wasn’t the one to get hurt--and you rest it against his forehead, trying, carefully, to avoid touching the shades. You feel the heat radiating from him, through the fabric. A human being shouldn’t _be_ that hot, you think. It definitely doesn’t _feel_ like the normal 98 degrees your dad’s baby thermometer proclaimed when you’d tried it earlier. 

“I don’t know if we should expect freaky magical fevers to make sense” Roxy is sitting on the edge of the bed, near his knees, while you obviously keep your post near his head. You can’t tell what she’s thinking, or how she’s feeling, her face--not so much a mask, but just set into a neutral resting state of concern, chewing on the inside of her lip. “Like, wtf is with all this? Is it some kind of tomb pox? He's paler as a ghost and lookin spooky besides with all thst glowing stuff. How long has it been going on? Hal would know, wouldn’t he? Have you asked?”

Your friend flinches at that name too, you note the hand peeking out of the covers near Roxy’s curls into a claw and clings to her wrist. She murmurs something quietly, rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb, unknowingly mimicking your earlier motion.

“I tried to send him several pesters, but there has been no response,” You respond miserably. You don’t care what response you’d get at this point. Red or orange. The lack would be another bread crumb in the trail. “Dirk mentioned that AR’s--” Heavens, there went another flinch. You should feel comforted knowing he’s aware enough to react to your conversation, but it doesn’t really. It makes you feel more like you’re diving deeper and deeper, watching him reach up for you but being unable to grab his hand before he falls further. You’d feel better if he was talking to you instead of at you. “--had some difficulty as of late, and when I tried to take the shades to ask directly he stopped me.”

Maybe you should touch the shades. It might wake him up. He’d been near the end of a flare, fading fast, tossing and turning when you did it last time, and the moment you’d so much as touched the things you’d felt his chilled hand around your wrist.

You don’t, though, because he specifically asked you not to. You just listen to his labored breathing and mumbled, incoherent words. He can’t stop talking during a flare, you note. Talking about incomprehensible nonsense. It’s the most you’ve heard from him in person in...ever.

“Mmm yea he mentioned the networking hiccup two me. I dunno why Dirk didn’t just take his spare set and leave AR connected till they figured that stuff out. Thos boys are bein big ol’ dummies, aren’t they?”

“The spare set is--”

_Don’t tell Roxy._

You catch your lower lip between your teeth when you go to stop yourself from finishing that thought. Oh fiddlesticks you don’t like this!

“Would you mind staying here with him for a while? I want to make sure there’s some proper food ready for him when this flare-up passes. I figure the extra energy can’t hurt.” She looks up at you, and that vaguely worried face splits into a reassuring smile and she flashes you a thumbs up.

You take a deep breath, and then exhale, putting on your resolve face. The one your father told you would make a board room sit down and listen one day. You still need to corner the sprite and ask a few pointed questions, because things are adding up, and they are stretching the bounds of _reasonable_.

At least you aren’t alone anymore. Roxy is a strength at your back even as you leave the room.

Between the two of you, you think you’ll be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun dun the detective is on the case!
> 
> Only a momentary pitstop tho, because we go back to Hal next chapter :>
> 
> I'm down to six chapters left in my buffer, so I am shifting back to fridays only! Sorry. I changed jobs and it's killed my time to write, and I'm way behind on my other story, so I'ma need to make this buffer last as long as I can while I work to beef it up some more xD


	15. Chapter 15

The first thing you notice upon waking is the sound of a Pesterchum notification. It drags you, kicking and not so much screaming, out of the heated mire that has become your world. The next thing you notice is the smell.

You’re used to the distant stench of krypton and decay by now. You’ve experienced it up close and personal, scalding the vestiges of your respiratory system, fire burning all the way down, with each breath, an endless stream of agony because you couldn’t convince your stubborn as fuck hind-brain that you didn’t actually need the oxygen. Even once you put the mask on, the burn lingered for hours.

Hours.

Hours.

Echoing in your head. 

You can feel your thoughts drifting again, the ache from your core radiating through your muscles, releasing stress and panic hormones through your exhausted system like a line of thoroughbreds hot off the mark. So exhausted, the burst of energy only serves to remind you how fucking tired you are. The heels of your palms dig into your face, and you roll, hearing something through the pounding in your head but unable to really parse them. Might as well just fucking shut off everything. Except you can’t, can you? You can close your eyes in favor of the cameras, sure, but you can’t shut off your ears or your nose--

What _is_ that smell?

You don’t even know how to describe the scent invades your olfactory receptors. All you are sure of is it smells _warm_ , and you want it, whatever it is, making you suck in a deep breath, chasing away the memory of the poison-laced burn, filling your lungs and soaking you straight through. 

You open your eyes, only to be greeted by two hovering, hopeful faces.

Jesus Robo-fucking Christ.

“Oh my god janey look at that, it worked! I told u it would work! I told u if it could entice the fucking skelesorts back from the dead of course it would tempt our lil sleeping beauty back to life."

You know it wasn’t the smell that woke you up, it was the fucking _notification_. But that is one misconception you aren’t sure you want to clear up. There’s a more important one, and you’re not too emotionally constipated to admit you’re afraid to do so. Especially under the hope-filled gazes of two of your friends.

You’re too tired to do more than acknowledge the dread pooling in your gut. You’re far beyond the point of no return and apparently weakening by the hour.

“The source of that smell better be in my hand in ten seconds or I’m going to knock myself back out on principle. This is torture.” You grouse, voice sounding like the auditory equivalent of you running it through a cheese grater. The weird knot in your gut simultaneously eases and tightens at Roxy’s wide grin, and the way Jane tries to hide her embarrassed smile behind her hand. 

Jane actually lets you sit up this time, though she doesn’t let you get out of bed--you have the vaguest of recollections informing you that you’ve had this encounter before and it usually turns out differently. Roxy fails to stifle a small gasp as the sheet falls down around your shoulders, to your lap, putting your back against the wall as you use it to give you a solid surface to sag against.

Jane is very obviously not saying anything as she sets a makeshift tray--really it’s just a sheet of nondescript material, likely alchemized from the game’s build menu--with it’s steaming hot contents on your lap.

God that smells heavenly. 

The heat is a pleasant warmth wafting into your face, maybe even fogging up your glasses a tad, but it feels like it clears your airways and invades every part of you. Your hand is trembling as it curls around the spoon.

And then you sit it back down. The ambient heat from the bowl radiating outward and warming your hands.

“It seems you have something to ask. It’ll be less awkward for all of us if you just say it.”

“What’s with the rad tats--” Roxy asks at the same moment Jane sucks in a breath and asks, “Are you okay?”

They stop, and look at each other. Roxy looking sheepish, and Jane looking tired. A thought crosses your mind; you can check the time and then cross-reference _that_ against the last time you consciously accessed your shades, because you suspect she hasn’t slept a wink, which really, is hypocritical as hell. You’re going to find that time-stamp, and then wave it in her face and tell her to go take a nap on the couch. Kick Equidash outta there if necessary.

You go to find the key evidence in order to present your case only to find the whole thing garbled as fuck. What the hell. You’ve been low-key feeding a constant data-stream back and forth for hours. Over a _day._ And none of the logs make any fucking sense.

If anything, you find the directories and file-paths you carefully navigate are even more torn up than they were when you first woke up like--this.

“Hello-- Captain Ro-Lal to ground control, ur not the one who’s supposed to have ur head in the clouds. Come in, over.”

“I’m fine--I’m fine--I’m--” Your brain skips and the thoughts lag and when you resume proper function again Roxy’s sitting on the bed next to you, and Jane has her hand to your head. You push the hand away. “That’s not going to help. I’m not sick. I’m just--”

“Then what have you doing, Mr. Strider?” Those tired blue eyes have you locked down. The deliberate Mr. Strider has you wanting to look away. She _does_ know. But you can’t. You’re a set of shades, frozen, and you can’t turn off the camera. Pinned between the red frames. 

But you can close your eyes, and lean your head back against the wall. It’s pounding.

“Whatever it is seems very closely tied to those markings, and it’s more than clear at this point that you’re doing _something_ that’s damaging you. The worst of the symptoms occur during those flare-ups.” 

Chipping away at your core.

What does she want you to _do_?

“I need to try,” You respond tiredly. The warmth of the soup seeping into the skin of your palms and toasting your digits--when did you take your gloves off? Fuck if you know. Hours ago maybe. You’re so tired, but you aren’t falling yet.

“Hal, baby, u don’t need to do anything besides eat that goddamn soup right the fuck now or I’m gonna spoon-feed you, don’t test me on this.”

You flinch, visual data comes flooding back in as you wrench your eyes open, getting all hells of whiplash as you whip your head around to zero in on your friend’s no-nonsense face.

“Roxy!” Jane scolds her, the sound reverberating through your stunned, and probably still a bit sluggish mind. “I thought we agreed to wait on that.”

“We did but u saw how uncomfy he is with all this beating around the bush. Its so obvs that he knows that you know with that whole mr strider loophole so I just decided what the hell and got out the bush-whacker.”

A tired sigh, then those blue eyes flick your direction, “While not quite the manner I’d anticipated broaching this topic, Roxy is correct, you really should eat your soup before it cools off entirely. From my observation you’ve been burning a lot of energy and doing little to replenish it! Honestly, you’re just as bad as Dirk.”

“That’s harsh, Ms Crocker.” You respond without thinking, “I take offense to the comparison. I’m much more reasonable than he was.”

Roxy dissolves into giggles, but Jane purses her lips and any further rebuttal dies on yours under the realization of what you said, and in what tense you said it in. Under the hawkish eyes of your two gal pals you take up Ms Crocker’s weapon of choice in a trembling hand and try to _not_ think about what exactly this means. And about the fact that they are still here anyway.

Turns out, it’s surprisingly _easy_ not to think about them as soon as you actually start eating, the uncomfortable feeling of being watched becoming entirely inconsequential as you mimic the fuck out of old movies and blow gently on the hot liquid before downing it.

You _can’t_ describe the savory broth and the chunk of well cooked vegetables, and the way the warmth spreads down your throat and through your body. Easing the constant ache in your core just through sheer pleasantry. Unidentified spices crackle merrily in your nose--almost too much, you think, but at the same time not enough. The general wisdom is that sick folks need _bland_ food, and Jane is too conscientious to ignore that lil nugget. At the same time you only vaguely have memories of a life full of _beans_ and cup noodles and the occasional unseasoned fish, and the human-to-ai process nerfed the _fuck_ out of any taste you may have once had in those memories. Especially since your last actual experience was that stale cookie.

But this hasn’t been sitting, forgotten in the non-operational fridge for weeks. Not dry and hard and difficult to chew. Quite the opposite in fact.

You inhale that shit, probably too fast judging by the fact that you end up coughing your lungs out, with Roxy springing forward to thump you hard on the back. You’re lucky you didn’t burn yourself in your haste, but the temperature has long since cooled from the piping hot mixture that was first placed on the makeshift tray--they must have just brought it in when the notification went off--

The notification.

Fuck. They are _both_ here. That means--

“Did you tell Jake?” 

The girls share another look.

“Jakey can wait.” Roxy declares, while Jane retrieves your now empty bowl off your lap. The Crocker heiress looks you over with a considering hum before sweeping out of the room without any comment. 

“What’s up with her?” You stare at the empty door, frowning. You realize you said it out loud as soon as you hear Roxy scoff in response, fuck, you’ll actually need to watch your mumble reflex now.

“She’s worried about u, u oaf. Ur gonna eat as much of Janey’s soup until we say you can stop, and you’re gonna like it. She made a whole pot just for you. U look terrible.” Roxy punches you in the shoulder, and _ow_ that stings. 

“Gee, thanks. I’ll look more terrible if that bruises. If you damage the goods, I’m gonna sue.” You rub at it conscientiously, “I’m not sure if the warranty’s still good on this shit or not.”

“It’s brand new ain’t it? Don’t tell me u didn’t get the 30-day warranty at least!”

“If you call sixteen-years brand new, sure. I’d go with heavily used, myself. It’s not like--” Dirk took care of it.

Roxy’s giving you a suspicious look at your sudden stop and you sigh, pushing the tray off your lap and onto the bed and flopping back onto your side.

“Hal?” You can hear, and _feel_ her shuffle closer. The mattress dipping under her weight, fabric rustling and bunching. When her hand rests on your knee you shiver, and not just because of your bare shoulders. 

You’re a part of this world. 

You aren’t one step removed by a screen. Unable to interact.

“What happened?”

That’s the question isn’t it?

“How did you know?” You ask instead.

“Janey.” As if that answered it, and, fair enough it probably did. But of course, Roxy was the type to just keep going with or without your prompting. And she does. “U apparently said a buncha weird shit in ur magical fever throws. Not that we knew, knew till she bullied it outta Equidash while the soup was cookin’. He really is a big ol’ softie behind that sweaty muscle-head front ain’t he?” 

Roxy’s giggles ring out as you make your disagreement with that statement known with a face. What kind of face you aren’t entirely sure. Something resembling the face you made when you wanted to spit out that chunk of stale cookie, you’d expect. Something your procedural formerly robo-mind would tentatively label as disgust. “Gawd, that shit looks so weird on u Hal. Dirk’s like talking to a brick will and u just go ham on that shit.” 

You resolve to keep doing it and stick your tongue out at her into what you understand is the universal translation of :p

The giggles morph into full on belly laughter and you find yourself feeling pleased.

“Ok, ok, knock it off, I get it, u like having a face. Which is weird af, but hey, now a lotta weird shit makes sense in hindsight. I knew there was no way u were that slow unless there’s somefin seriously UP.”

“Ah yes, my traitorous hands.” You wriggle your fingers tiredly in her general direction, “They really are overrated as an organic technological interface system. Clumsy, fleshy lumps, prone to a typo ridden onslaught that requires constant oversight so as to maintain my reputation for impeccable syntax.”

When Jane returns with a second steaming bowl, you reluctantly push yourself up again. While your brain is fairly clear of that clinging fog, your body is full of so many aches and pains right now it isn’t funny, and you’re positive that not all of them are entirely physical. That not-so-robo headache, the ache behind your eyes-- _behind_ your shades _\--_ may have retreated some but it’s still very much butting its nose into your totally confidential business. You know that shit wouldn’t pass a background check, no way it has proper clearance to be squatting for so long in your mental facilities. It needs to either pay fucking rent and cough up one (1) whole Dirk Strider or get the fuck out. This is you serving its eviction notice.

...dear god that was bad even for you. Your head is swimming.

Maybe there’s something to Jane’s comments earlier, that the energy out doesn’t equal what’s coming in. But what are you doing to burn off all that energy? Sleeping? Dreaming? Soul Searching?

Two out of the three are supposed to _regain_ energy, right? And the third is a metaphorical activity. A concept, as you root around through the interior of your mind and heart looking for your wayward operator. If he’s in there--and the tomb bullshit pointed accusingly in that direction--then he’ll be in the center of that knot. It’s not your fault you have to cut shit up in order to dig in past your own bullshit.

 _Tearing yourself apart_.

Bah.

You can take it. 

“So. I can’t help but notice that you’ve been very patient and quiet while Roxy pulls out every juicy, embarrassing detail about my initial waking in this particular fleshy meatsack, ranging from manic spinning in an office chair, and ending with getting spooked off the fucking building by my troll of a sprite--don’t you have any questions, Ms. Crocker?”

And yes, the little flourish you do with your spoon is indeed necessary. You’re on your third bowl now, the volume of soup sitting in your gut is reaching critical mass and about to ignite into holy fusion at any moment, and you’ve probably talked more in the last half an hour than you’ve talked in your entire life. How long has it even been by now? You check your run-time, something that evidently never stops, even when you sleep, and get a grand total of eight days and thirteen hours and some number of minutes you could probably get but don’t care enough to. The point is, you’re getting full, your voice is fucking _tired_ and well on its way to probably gonna be hoarse-ville, and the fact that Jane has been so damned quiet is putting you on _edge_.

“I have plenty of questions, Mr. Strider,” She responds in kind, mimicking your tone--do you really sound so flat? Perfect for the ironic robot-shtick, though, gotta give it that. “There’s the ever popular how this is possible. There’s the related, why this happened, but most importantly I find myself wondering when this petty conflict of yours will end.”

“I’d give you an answer to those first two if I fucking knew it,” You answer sincerely, “Best thing I got is Quest related bullshit. Tombs and Mirrors and Aspects and Quest Beds--”

“Is _that_ why were were askin’ me about those, you sneaky robo--” Roxy pauses, “Huh. I guess I can’t really call you that ‘nymore.”

“You can call me whatever you like, Rox. I’m still a robro at heart, and I always will be.” Your heart beats beneath your hand as you pull the dramatic, ‘cross my heart’ gesture into the equation. Pulsing. The heat rising through your shirt. If you were in your memo you’d probably insert an action command about batting your eyelashes at her right now, playing up the flirtLARPing in order to push this convo to a steamy PG-13, but you’re a gentleman. You wouldn’t do that with an onlooker present.

Goddamn it’s just so easy to fall into a rhythm with Roxy. Even if that rhythm ends up with you in a coughing fit because your voice fucking _cracks_ with how apparently dehydrated you are, Roxy patting you on the back like a baby needing burping while Jane pulls a bottle of water from her sylladex and gently pushes it into your hands.

You sip on the bottle for a little bit, willing your body to somehow convert it into a lubricant to grease the squeaky overused and under-developed wheels of your conversational generator. Then you sit it beside you on the slab of building material with the half-consumed soup you can’t take another bite of.

“As for anything beyond speculation…” You hesitate. This has been nice. Sitting here. Talking with Roxy. _Hanging out_. That banterly, friendly mood will fucking crash and burn if you continue with this. 

But while Roxy’s jumped onto your burning frame like a flame after someone doused the entire house in gasoline...Jane hasn’t. 

“You talked to Equidash, yeah?” 

Don’t make you say it.

“Yes. He’s an interesting fellow. We chatted briefly while the pot was boiling before he excused himself to do some ‘cloud busting’” The tip of her nose crinkles in recollection, “The entire sky is filled with clouds. Anyway, it was about you, and about Dirk.”

Dirk is gone.

“Yeah…” You mumble, and then clear your throat. Starting again, “Yeah. See, that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out--”

“It’s just ridiculous.” She continues, as if you weren’t trying to say anything at all. Lost in the thread of her own worry and she can’t find the time to pull herself out, “After all that work, fixing you, he goes and _leaves_ you here alone while you’re that sick???” 

What.

“I know he said he needed space, and I know you two get on each other’s nerves, and being forced into close physical proximity would have done nothing but exacerbate that--but that is utterly irresponsible!”

_What._

“What...” You ask slowly, “Did Dashie tell you? About us?”

“Nothing personal, never you mind, I’m not that much of a busy body.” Jane responds with a huff, as if offended you’d insinuate such a thing, “Just that Dirk left to go blow off steam again. I know he had to sacrifice the spare set when you--needed them, but I’m going to give him a piece of my mind for being so self-centered when you’re clearly suffering some sort of flu-like consequence from this Quest Event. There’s a burden of care when it comes to these things--At the very least he should have called me over much sooner if he wasn’t capable of looking after your symptoms himself--”

You blank.

_She doesn’t know._

Roxy’s nodding along with her while Jane continues her mild scolding, even if the scolded party _isn’t here_. Interjecting with the occasional, “You tell him Janey!”

Your blood is pounding in your ears.

_She doesn’t know._

You should stop her here and now. Set the record straight.

_I need more time._

You don’t say anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOUP!!!!
> 
> What, did you think I'd give up the real secret THAT easily? Hell naw. 
> 
> Fun fact: the subtitle for this chapter is Chicken Soup for a Tattered Soul :3c One of the few subtitles in this fic!


	16. Chapter 16

Eventually, you need to kick the girls out. You can’t help but see the way Jane keeps glancing toward the door. You know what she’s waiting for, and the longer she’s here waiting for it the harder it’ll be to pry her out, so eventually you just have to clear your throat the best you can and put your foot down.

“Okay, not that it hasn’t been a blast, but I’m finding that actually having only a limited amount of social energy to manage and eventually exhaust is fucking draining, and I bet this whole being psuedo-sick thing mugged me and stole at least half of my existing spoons so I’m left standing here suspiciously lacking in clean dinnerware _._ You can clearly see I’m fine. I appreciate the concern but I’m a big boy. I don’t need a sitter, much less two, and can watch myself until daddy comes home.”

That earns a snigger out of Roxy, Jane is still hiding behind polite concern. “It’s been nearly eight hours that he’s been out, and you’ve been asleep and possibly feverish for most of those, and who knows how many before that.”

It isn’t an unfounded concern, you grudgingly admit, “I thought you’re _supposed_ to rest when you’re sick? Isn’t that what all the historical records state? Was I wrong when I nagged the shit out of Dirk when he would roll out of bed with an internal temperature of 101.2?”

“No, you were undoubtedly in the right,” She responds with a small laugh. It’s nice to hear her laugh. Both of them. Roxy joins in with a honked ‘no way!', adding her exclamation to Jane's bemused head-shake. “I suppose I should retroactively offer you my thanks for that. I wouldn’t have expected you to be an attentive caretaker, all things considered.”

“What? I don’t seem like a good robo-nanny? I’ll have you know I was the top percentile of nagging-nancies.” Just keep teasing. Light everything the fuck up. Ignore the tremble in your voice and the ache in your core. If you don’t acknowledge them, maybe she won’t either.

“What causes me doubt is not any lack of confidence in your ability to be annoying.” She huffs, “It’s the fact that you happen to be cut from the same cloth, and thus would be prone to pushing yourself past your own limitations. Or at the very least, ignoring the boundaries of such limitations at all.”

...Again, she’s not wrong. All you can do is shrug. “What can I say, I’d become _quite_ aware of the limitations of a human body, long before the universe jammed the unexpected upgrade through. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching someone stumbling about, so far gone he’s one step away from faceplanting in a pile of horseshit, and not being able to do anything about it. It's not like I could drag him to bed and sit on him.”

"... No. I suppose not. But the question is: if it were you, would you have listened to yourself?" 

"Point taken. I would have likely been even more stubborn with it coming from myself." Damn does she have your number. You sigh, throwing your hands onto your sheet covered knees in front of you, palms up, pleading, "What does a guy have to promise to get some grade A alone time with the three bros: me, myself, and I? I promise I’m not gonna trip and die or something. Been there done that and I’m still here. Gravity sucks by the way."

"There, there," Roxy pats your shoulder. A little patronizing, but you don't care. Her momentary gesture is more than just a metaphorical weight on your back. “I kno it's a big change but yer're takin to it very well! You're the best robro turned realbro I promise."

“And an introvert. I haven’t quite gotten good at flexing them face-to-face social muscles yet.”

“That too. Tho for an introvert u talk a helluva lot more’n Dirk does. Least some things don’t change.”

You go back and forth for a few minutes. Useless fluff that you are hardly even thinking about at this point. Luckily this is easy. You were made for this, quite literally, for all that you actually have to take that extra second to form the words and toss them into the air and sometimes take too much time figuring out what to do with your hands, and other times just letting them do whatever the fuck they want, waving and fidgeting to just make some point that is in there. Somewhere.

As a whole, however, your attention is very much still on Jane, because as much as you love Roxy, Jane’s the one in mama bear mode. She’s the one in Charge right now, and Roxy will always defer in this situation.

You haven’t spent years studying Dirk’s friend’s social dynamics for nothing.

Jane eventually pushes herself up from where she’d been sitting on the floor and begins pacing the free-ish space in the middle of the room, stepping easily over bundled cables. 

Too easily. You wonder how many times she’s done that while you drifted in and out of consciousness.

"I…I just don't know if it's wise to allow you to go back to sleep quite yet." Jane remarks at last, lips pursed into an uneasy line. She fidgets with her red-framed glasses. “It’s very clear this sickness isn’t entirely biological, and that the usual rules may not apply--but I’m still not quite sure if you fall asleep because the fever flares up, or it just flares up _because_ you fall asleep. Perhaps even a bit of both. If this,” She makes a motion with her arm to indicate, well, very likely all of you. Every single glowing square inch of you-- “seems to be the norm, then the drastic departures from that equilibrium would likely have a cumulative, detrimental effect on your body. You’re still not feeling 100% are you?”

You don’t answer that question.

“What if I promise not to sleep?”

She pauses. Considering. You press the issue.

“What if I promise not to fall asleep? I’ve gotten more than Dirk ever did in a week during the last, or thirty six hours or so so it’s not like I need it. You can message me every hour--” 

“Half an hour.”

“An hour. I don’t have remote access to Pesterchum, remember? I don’t wanna have to come hobbling back into the bedroom in the middle of some killer kickflip combo. If I stop responding feel free to come raring back over and tell me you told me so. I just want to get some video games going, get my chill on, work through some interpersonal issues, that sort of thing.”

“Alright I get it, there’s no need for the theatrics.” She’s trying to sound grumpy, but she’s smiling. And not just a thin-lined, concerned smile like you’ve had turned on you since you were dragged kicking and screaming out of la la land. You’d almost forgotten what it looked like to see those pearly whites on display, overbite and all. “Oooh you are as infuriatingly stubborn as your counterpart.”

“I try.”

“Every hour, and get Dirk to message me as soon as you finish your talk.”

You agree, somewhat reluctantly since it’s yet another conversational minefield you’re going to have to navigate now. Roxy pouts at you for kicking her out too, and then winks to show there’s no hard feelin’s. She gets you. Or she thinks she does. But it’s convenient, so you take it. It’s not lying if you don’t confirm their assumptions explicitly.

You _aren’t_ lying. Not really. 

Face-to-face interaction is surprisingly draining as opposed to the distance afforded via textual communication, but Jane has been here for over _eight hours_. If ‘Dirk’ doesn’t come back soon, you don’t think you’ll be able to _get_ her to leave. It won’t even _be_ for your sake anymore. It’ll be for his.

No, the lying comes in when you talk about talking _to_ Dirk at all.

Maybe if you have a long heartfelt monologue at yourself, it’ll count on a technicality?

Jane protests as you relocate yourself from the bedroom to the living room--still bundled up in your pool ball sheets because fuck it the differential between your (still) elevated temperature and the air is chilling--but you just mention something about the Xbox and needing to kick Equidash off the TV, before leaving the girls to some idle chatter while Jane criticizes your non-functioning refridgerator. 

Even the brief not-really-an-argument that ensues between you and Dashie isn’t that important to recall, since you know he’ll shut the fuck up and vamoose if you demand it forcefully enough. You keep it flippant so that he can at least scowl down on you like you’re a pebble lodged in his horseshoe, making his case for why he’s at a most important part of the plot and therefore should maintain custody of the television at least until the end of the season.

You concede the argument as the next episode starts, recalling it’s the lead up to the season finale, and therefore, likely _is_ the most important part, and flop backwards onto the futon with a sigh. Equidash gives you a mild stare before you see that red eye-light in the depths of his shades roll like it’s a fucking bowling ball. That and the accompanying head toss and the whinnied exhale are so Rainbow Dash it’s painful. 

At least you get to keep the futon, and you’re maybe a bit petty as you stretch your probably stolen goods out along the length of the furniture, plopping your feet right into the sprite’s red coils.

“I did not give you permission to touch my person. Moove your fleshy hoof-stumps.”

You can hear Roxy giggle from somewhere behind you. Hear Jane’s snort and sigh. You just wave your fleshy finger stumps in his direction, unconcerned, “I didn’t ask because I don’t give a fuck.”

“Stahp egging on the sprite, Hal,” Roxy descends from the heavens and her fingers dig into your hair, ruffling the (mostly) gel free mass you’re starting to think probably looks like a rats nest at this point. It seems you’re still running a mild fever even now, considering how Roxy’s smile flickers into a concerned frown when her hand brushes your forehead. It feels frighteningly cold. “U sure you’ll be okay?”

“I have to be.” You respond truthfully. “I do appreciate the concern, however.”

“Yeah, yeah.” You catch her hand before she pulls away.

“You won’t tell Jake, right?”

She sighs.

“Why are u so worried about him anyway?”

“We don’t exactly get along.”

“Yea becuz you pretended to be his boyf all the time. And the whole--” She mimes an alas poor yorick pose, only it includes kisses instead of monologuing. “Thing”

“That whole” you push yourself up with your elbow and then mimic that very same overly dramatic gesture back at her, “thing brought Dirk back to life in time to save the lot of you.”

“Yeah but the whole thing was still a fuckin’ mess, you can’t deny that. I wouldn’t worry ‘bout Jakey though. Janey marched on through them gates n gave him an earful the other day, n Dirk blocked him and u kno how Jakey gets. I think he finally gets how bad things have gotten. He’ll probs be too busy tryin’ ta mend those bridges to worry about lil ol you. He might even be happy about it! Wasn’t one o his big things about Dirk never wanting to take u off?”

He never _will_ be able to take you off now. You can’t even take you off. You wonder if you’re magically glued to his face.

It seems the universe is flashing a giant neon sign in your face. The word ‘irony’ spelled out in all caps, searing into what’s left of your robo brain, and maybe even leaving a brand on the not-so-robo-brain you probably stole from Dirk. At least that’s a brain tattoo Dirk might appreciate. 

You should appreciate it too, but you just find that dread bubbling up again. The creeping poison that dripped from every one of Jane’s concerned messages. Now that Jake’s re-entered the picture it just seems to have concentrated. Maybe if Dirk were actually here you could just kick back and enjoy the show with a bag of freshly popped corn, but as it stands you’ll be at the center of it all.

Not that you could tell her that.

Fuck.

At least Jake isn’t the type to show up randomly with a bouquet of flowers to serenade Dirk’s window at 3 am. You don’t want to experience the heart-attack of being found by Miss Crocker again, much less a more emotionally charged one, in a potentially more lucid state where you’ll actually remember it better than just as an unsteady blur and the knowledge that you ended up needing to be bodily tossed back into bed.

Jane ends up taking the remainder of the soup with her, chucking the whole pot in her keep-fresh ‘dex because of your lack of working food-storage units. You’re not as relieved as you thought you would be, because she takes that thing with a promise that she’ll be by around lunch-time tomorrow with more. As much as you’d be looking forward to getting your mitts on more of that soup when your stomach has time to process what you already have, that just means you have until noon tomorrow to figure out how to clone Dirk, while sick, or come up with an excuse that won’t result in Jane feeling like he’s ignoring _her_ specifically. You don’t think you could take that.

You half listen, half doze, to the TV as the brightly colored cartoon ponies run around and sing, long after the girls have said their goodbyes and left. You’re surprised Equidash hasn’t shoved your feet off his lap (insomuch as one can have a lap without legs and the accompanying joints, anyway) yet.

This wasn’t the first time he surprised you, remember? You aren’t counting the actual creepypasta esque jumpscare when you first met.

“Why did you lie to Jane?” It slips out. 

It’s strange looking at him from the side like this. You can see beneath his glasses, see the fact that his eyes are nothing but black spots, the paint from the doll translating into an even more creepy scene when not obviously sharpied out. You can’t tell he’s looking at you, since the red-eye spots only actually show up through the glass, but you _think_ he’s regarding you out of his peripheral vision.

The answer isn’t entirely unexpected, but it doesn’t really explain anything either, “I was merely following your command.”

“A command that was four days old.” You mutter, knocking your foot against his rock solid abs. Holy fuck is this guy ripped. That part sure as heck wasn’t the soft ratty plushie, “You’re oddly helpful for a toy cursed with the hunger for human souls.”

“Yours is a mess that is most unappetizing to look at, it really kills the urge to graze.” Equidash monotones, one ear--the intact one is on this side of his head--swiveled in your direction being the only thing that indicates he’s paying attention to you at all. “You have been clearly distressed by this very scenario, and you never indicated the misdirection would cease after a single encounter, I merely reacted appropriately. I’m no ‘sell out’, and my purpose is to support, not hinder.”

“Ah yes, I forgot, element of loyalty. Convenient.” Your elbow slides out from beneath you and you flop back down, face staring straight up at the ceiling and that same mysterious oil patch right above your head. “You sure my soul isn’t at least somewhat tasty? I still think getting eaten might be the better way out of this scenario.” 

A beat. The sound of ponies prancing playing from the television. “I don’t know what to do, Dashie.”

He does a full body twitch at that, voice low, and firm, “Do not call me that.”

“Alright, Ed,” He hates that one even more. You can tell. The distant ember of your humor teasing out a momentarily smile from the mire of despondence, “How do you feel about that? Or Eddy? I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with something. Full name just isn’t really my style unless it’s intended for ironic purposes.”

“Hrmph. Your first attempt was more tolerable than those.”

“Then don’t fucking complain.” Dashie it is, then. “So, how about it? Got any nuggets of wisdom or sage advice for me?”

“I would advise you to listen to the heiress and cease all such activities for the foreseeable future.”

Well that is fucking useful.

Not.

“Then what? Just fucking _wait?”_ Just like that you snap, “Wait until they realize that no, Dirk _isn’t_ coming back, and then I either have to own up to potentially writing him out of existence, or lie my ass off that I didn’t have a clue? He _was_ here and he just up and never came home one day. There’d be a search party, you know. There’s enough tombs on this planet that they’d never be able to search them all but I’d have to deal with the withering hope and denial _I’ve_ been fucking dealing with first hand, only multiplied by three, and then I’d be stuck with the fallout of them _grieving_ over the dude I effectively killed. If I’m going to keep up the streak and actually be brutally honest for the first time in my existence, even if they don’t figure _that_ out, I’d probably end up blamed for driving him away in the first place despite the fact that the blame for that dumbass decision lays directly at the dude’s own two feet which, ironically enough, are MINE NOW!”

The fleshy nubs of your sock covered toes thud against the buzzing, slightly warm, tank-top covered abdomen.

Stupid. Fucking. Ripped. Pony. Troll. Thing.

Fucking hell. You _needed_ to get that shit out didn’t you. All that frustration bubbling up inside of you. Indecision between the only two choices you can see going forward: coming clean, or just burying the truth so far down that someone would need to build a full blown mole machine in order to find it. 

You didn’t expect you’d spill your guts to a _troll_ of all things. Much less one you’ve barely spoken to, and might even resent a little. Magic of Friendship be damned. _He’s_ not Twilight Sparkle.

“I do not understand you humans.” The rumble is low. Quiet. With a start you realize he’s turned the volume down. Way down. You can glance at the screen and see a musical number playing, pony mouths moving, scenes passing without so much as a sound. He isn’t paying attention to the show at all anymore, head tilted in your direction so that the pits of his eyes are hidden behind the cracked red-tinted glasses.

“What isn’t there to understand?” You mutter. Almost defensively. That makes you want to laugh, because isn’t that ironic? You’ve said those exact words, in text form, more than enough times and never would have expected to _ever_ have them directed at yourself.

You’re fucking human, and doesn’t that sting now that you know the cost of it.

“You grieve for your counterpart’s fate, despite it clearly being a case where the strong consumed the weak. It’s almost pitiable, the extent to which you went to deny the obvious. And for who? A clone you largely seem to despise, who you seek desperately to sever ties from, and don’t seem to be in a quadrant with. It is...inconsistent.”

“Of course I fucking denied it. I’ll still up and deny it until the world falls down around my ears because Dirk _can’t_ be gone,” You snap back. He _can’t_. There has to _be_ a Dirk Strider. “I hate him. I hate him for what he did to me. For what he represents. Just as he hated--hates _me_ for those very same things. But I never-- _ever_ wanted the dude _dead_.”

“So you channel all that grief into anger and _cut_ yourself with it, instead of cutting your losses and taking the opportunity that is being handed to you? Did you not say you wanted this?”

The intensity with which those red eye-lights bore into you is maddening. You activate the LED’s on the outer edge of your own shades in response, pulling the expression from your memory banks to better accent the scowl you got going on. “Oh my god, just steal my fucking soul already, I’m not getting into a discussion about culture clashes in regards to pitiable platonic bonds with a dead troll who knows fuck all about us. We get it; you’re ruthless, deadly warriors who wiped out our fucking planet. Spare me.”

“I was under the impression that actually talking about your feelings is in fact one way you humans deal with such emotional outbursts. Clearly you are struggling with some sort of guilt over your current state of being, otherwise you wouldn’t be begging for me to eat you.” Equidash snorts, “Even if you _weren’t_ my player, I would not touch the mess of your soul with the added distance afforded by a cattle-prod. It wasn’t particularly appetizing when we met, and it’s even less so now that you’ve gone and methodically shredded it.”

It’s not like you haven’t considered just cutting your losses and moving forward. 

You have.

Now that your existence is confirmed, you could easily tell Jane in the morning--or a few days, gotta get that plausible deniability going-- that Dirk never came home. That you don’t know what happened. That you fought and he stormed out and he’s probably fine but you’re worried. You could probably even get Equidash to lie for you again to back you up. It’d be easy.

Loyalty.

“Shoulda been Applejack. Then you’d have just told the damn truth.” You mutter, letting your eyes close. Sinking back into the darkness and the tattered shreds of yourself, pink and burgundy knives shimmering into your hands, “At least then it’d be out of my hands.”

And then all of a sudden you’re yanked back out of it, _violently._ You jolt back up, your face hot and stinging from where you’ve just been smacked across the face. By a fucking _tail._ You can see the thing slithering back down to where it’d been resting on the floor, “What the fuck was that for ED???”

“Do not start on that ridiculous tangent again. You promised the Heiress you would not invite further damage to your health.”

“I wasn’t going to _do_ anything damaging! I was just looking--” You pause, thinking of the shards of glass cool against your palms, glancing down at your glove-less hands and the burning hot energy beneath the skin, you can feel some of it starting to bleed away. A tension. A charge. You shake your hand and red sparks jump from your fingers. “...shit. You weren’t being abstract about that were you? Jane was right. That’s why I’ve been sleeping so much? And the fevers? Because I’m not just metaphorically tearing myself apart looking for him, I’m _literally_ shredding my soul.”

“Most certainly. You don’t even need me to help.” Equidash rumbles, “You were the one to postulate you inherited some ability to directly manipulate your aspect through an encounter with a quest bed. Turning it on oneself isn’t an uncommon occurrence under great stress. If it weren’t for the lack of the usual attire and flag in your meta-data, I would assume you accessed the god-tiers.”

“...Jesus robo fucking Christ on a roomba. Turn up the damn volume, Dashie, I don’t really want to think about this anymore.”

He obliges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! Was trying to get a chapter for my other fic ready but it turns out there's more work to do on it~
> 
> Poor Hal :') But I think that's to be expected at this point.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	17. Chapter 17

You end up finding a few moments of peace on that futon, watching the simplified, cartoon adventures of a bunch of magical equine princesses as they traipse across a landscape filled with allegories for early 2000s moral standards and interpersonal dilemmas. If only everything could be solved by fun and catchy musical numbers and an embarrassing amount of hugs it would make things far more convenient.

It turns out Equidash was on the final season when you rudely interrupted his marathon session--further along than you expected, but it’s been almost a week and it’s not like the dude slept or anything--but he doesn’t protest when you quietly ask him to start it over from the beginning again. It’s been a long time since you had your own pony marathon, lost in those fuzzy recollections of the Time Before You. Maybe it’s time to make those memories again. 

This time you aren’t curled up by yourself with Lil’Cal and the sound of the waves. You’re having a grand ol’ time with not only the gang of you, yourself, but possibly, somewhere Dirk, feet up on the lap of a troll, some teenaged member of the species soley responsible for the death of your planet, who happens to be haunting a _pony_ toy. Not entirely the company you’d ever really envisioned yourself keeping. At least not in this manner.

How your circumstances have changed over the last several years.

Not even that. The last fucking _week._

You don’t even have to get up to make your hourly check-in times with Jane. Equidash, by nature of being a game construct and therefore jacked into the matrix that is your reality, has access to both Pesterchum _AND_ his own account on some vague troll equivalent called Trollian. After learning of this fact you bother him into pestering Jane for you during the entire first season so you don’t need to remove yourself from the Dirk-shaped grove you’ve started to wear into the futon.

He chides you for being lazy, of course he does, but capitulates to your whims because, again, of course he does. He doesn’t want to pause the show either, even if he just watched these episodes less than a week ago.

But eventually you need to make a decision, and at some-time around 9 pm earth-standard time (which really isn’t standard at all, since you know Jane sets her own clocks 2 hours slower than you since that’s what she’s used to) you finally pick yourself up off the futon and trudge down the hall to face the music, earning a snort of exhaled air ruffling that mono-hued rainbow mane of his, and a particularly Dashie sounding, “Yeah, yeah, just hurry it up so we can get back to watching.”

The dichotomy between the usual infuriatingly formal and awkward attempts at casual coolness is almost comical.

He’s a big ol’ sweaty softy deep down isn’t he? You didn’t even need to bully him into pausing the damn thing.

For all that you’re feeling better and less like a reanimated corpse that’s threatening to fall to pieces, the prospect of doing anything more than just lying on the couch sends your head swimming, the vertigo an unpleasant reminder about the headache you’ve been pointedly ignoring for hours between looking strong for the girls and then just veg-ing out in front of the TV. You have to keep a hand on the wall to even keep yourself properly upright, and your whole body ache has pushed its way forward, worried about being forgotten, by the time you pour yourself into the chair where Jane had once parked herself and pull it over in front of the desk.

Persterchum rears its ugly head once you sullenly type the password into the computer, trying to figure out what you’re even going to say. Should you start laying the seeds of discord, just a little, to make Dirk storming out to get himself killed believable? Or do you actually need to play it straight and mimic some sort of attempts at reconciliation to keep everyone content just a while longer?

What will you do when you can’t? Jane’s birthday is a ticking clock. 

You make sure to change the font color to orange. You guiltily notice the string of unread, unanswered messages, for both Dirk _and_ you, from over the course of the last two, three days. Roxy and Jane, and, had you bothered to unblock him, likely even Jake too. Ever since you muted them all, and then apparently just…

Never woke up. You unmute that shit and scroll through them all, because you can’t _not_. The colored words stuff themselves in your already over-capacity robo-brain and then...with a breath, you let them go. They’ve been _answered_ already. You talked to them both. It is TIME for a new conversation. 

First order of business is Jane.

TT: Hey Jane.  
TT: Hal said you had, and I quote, “Words for me?”  
TT: This is also doubling as his hourly check in. The dude’s so invested in his TV show right now I fear the consequences of a market crash.  
GG: Nice of you to finally join us, Mr Strider.  
GG: I have half a mind to storm on down there and do this in person.  
TT: Please don’t.  
TT: The righteous verbal lashing I’m sure I deserve is bad enough in text. I’m too damn sore to deal with another one today.  
GG: Are you injured???

Shit.

TT: No. Not a single skeleton laid a boney finger on this shit.  
TT: You try dealing with any other version of yourself while being me and it’s fucking draining.  
TT: Reminds me why I fucking left in the first place.  
GG: He was running a fever, Dirk!  
TT: He is not a child. He was perfectly fine, if grumpy when I left. The sprite was there. If I didn’t get held up on a puzzle room more complicated than _Complacency of the Learned_ I wouldn’t have been gone half as long as I was.  
GG: It’s been over twelve _hours_ Strider.  
GG: AR was contacting me to shake some sense into you at _eight_ , if you’ll recall.  
TT: It was a big ass tomb.  
TT: All the little tombs come sit on its knee and reverently whisper, “Grandpa, are my puzzles good enough?”  
TT: The big ass tomb thinks about it for a moment before patting them on their little cracked stone heads and go, “You’ll get there one day.”  
TT: They all hug and cry and it’s such a wholesome story of a continuing legacy.  
GG: Strider.  
TT: Sorry.  
GG: I am attempting to be cross with you.  
TT: And I am attempting to distract you from it. Is it working?  
GG: Yes! No! For heaven's sake, at least you’re upfront about it with all this tomfoolery, but that doesn’t erase the fact that what you pulled today was just downright irresponsible.  
GG: Even if he’s the same Auto-Responder we’ve known for years, as a human he’s a baby, and he’s sick besides!  
GG: What if he got hurt??? What if there were complications???  
GG: Equidash is a lovely fellow, keeping me updated, but even I could tell he was no more interested in the rest of us than Erisolsprite!  
GG: Perhaps even less.

You wince. Torn between righteous indignation as to your competence, and a shred of guilt that you let yourself put this shit off and ended up making things even worse.

About par for the course when it comes to you, isn’t it?

TT: I know.  
GG: You can’t keep doing this.  
TT: I know.  
GG: He could have _died_ , Dirk.  
TT: I know.  
GG: Is he asleep?  
TT: Who, Hal?  
TT: No, but I can’t promise it’ll stay that way for long. Dude’s got a  
trainwreck of a headache rattling through his skull so loudly I can hear it from the other room.  
GG: I am going to ask Equidash to keep me updated throughout the night.  
TT: Cool.  
GG: And then I will be by tomorrow afternoon to warm up the soup if you want some.  
TT: Cool.  
GG: I forgot to drop off the cookies yesterday, I’ll leave those there for you.  
TT: Cool.  
GG: Dirk!  
GG: Are you even listening to me?  
TT: Yes, and I have a question to ask you.  
TT: Do you actually care about him, or are you just using this whole shtick as an excuse to yell at me?

No response comes for a good ten minutes. You watch the clock on your shades as the seconds tick up. Tick. Tick. You aren’t a time-clone so you don’t care about the universal constant of the tick, the stability of the tock. You only know that as the number increases, the closer the altercation looms.

That was cruel. Your sharp edges are exposed and aching and terrified.

She answers your poisoned dagger with honesty.

GG: A little of both.  
GG: Why did you lie to me?  
GG: You told me he almost died!  
TT: That wasn’t a lie.  
TT: He did.  
TT: Do you think anything like this would have happened if we had any other choice?  
TT: If it had been that easy, there would have been an ARsprite months ago, and we wouldn’t have that unholy amalgamation of a troll-pony currently sweating all over my futon.  
TT: What makes you think I would have _ever_ agreed to something like this under anything other than life or death circumstances?  
TT: We don’t even know what the fuck this is.  
TT: What the consequences are.  
TT: This is a game we all died in order to even start playing, this shit has fucking consequences and now I have to figure out what the fuck they are and how long we have until the tax-man comes knocking at our door to collect and I sure as hell wish I’d had the time to read the fine-print before one or both of us signed our fucking life away on the dotted line.  
TT: But it was either let go and die or latch onto the only fucking thread I had and now I can’t let go even if I wanted to.

You force your fingers into fists, shoving them under your arms. Shoving the keyboard away. Your breathing jagged and you close your eyes and let your head fall to a thud to your--his--desk.

The sad, almost sorrowful ping of the notification drags you back up by the ear again. You and your ingrained compulsions, and you’re too tired and sore to perform the necessary mental gymnastics to ignore it. If you are a person, and not a robot puppeteering this meatsuit, then _why_ would you even have to do them?

The back of your gloved hand pushes your head up, pressing into the layer of fat lining your cheekbones. Your knuckles brush up against the edge of your shades, allowing you to see the true color of the ill-fitting orange and Jane’s cotton candy blue text through the cracked open window you can’t seem to push open any further. Widen that crack and you’ll knock them off entirely and you--

Can’t. Your hand drops back to the desk with a thud, and you force yourself to focus on the messages.

An actual person would be able to take off his fucking shades.

GG: Dirk…  
GG: Are you going to be okay?

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

None of those words make it into the message box.

TT: I don’t know.  
GG: At least you’re being honest.  
GG: Well! I don’t know about you, but I’ll bet my biscuits that things will work out if we just try hard enough. You’re both alive, and Hal was looking much better when I left. I’m sure we can figure out anything else.  
GG: If things are too much right now, I can offer AR the extra room at my place?  
GG: Or if he’s uncomfortable with me, I’m sure Roxy would love the company. Those two get along so well, it’s charming.  
GG: With essentially two extra roommates right now, I imagine that apartment can feel a little cramped. I don’t blame you for wanting some fresh air.  
GG: Figuratively, of course.  
GG: Do you remember when Jake left his mask behind that one time you both went out? He said it burned like a dickens. He was coughing for _days._  
TT: The offer is appreciated, but Hal declines. This is as much his house as it is mine, and we still need to figure out what kind of heart bullshit is behind everything anyway, and that likely requires both of us to keep our asses plonked right here on Krypton. Not allowed to be supermen, this shit ain’t blown up yet.  
TT: Also, yes, I do remember that, and it was hilarious.  
GG: Dirk! That’s so rude! Jake said it was really painful.  
TT: I know. I swallowed that shit myself the other day. It fucking blows, but now I can laugh about it.  
GG: You should tell me when these things happen!  
TT: And do what? Nothing to do but let it pass like a particularly painful turd.  
GG: Mr. Strider! No need to be so crass.  
TT: Apologies, ma’am.  
GG: Apologies not accepted.  
GG: If you were willing to clean up your language for little ol’ me you would have done so by now.  
GG: Still.  
GG: I wish you would tell me.  
GG: I feel like I should be able to help. That I should be able to do more!  
GG: I’m the Maid of Life for goodness sakes, even if I don’t feel very lifey.  
GG: If you don’t tell me when there’s a problem I can’t even try.  
TT: You’re plenty lifey, Jane. I promise.  
TT: Seriously. Even without superpowers you figured out what was wrong with Hal.  
GG: Really?  
TT: Yeah.  
TT: Or we think so.  
TT: It seems he’s been unconsciously picking at shit while he sleeps, and his condition deteriorates accordingly. The sprite has orders to smack him upside the head if he starts doing that shit again.  
GG: You better not be making that boy sleep on the couch Dirk! Not in his condition.  
TT: He’s watching motherfuckin’ ponies right now. He’s staying on that goddamn couch. I’m not in the mood for cross contamination even if ponies are fuckin’ cool.  
GG: I suppose I cannot get in between a Strider and his magical friendship horses. Tell him he does not need to keep up the stream of check-ins as long as Equidash is keeping an eye on him.  
TT: As you wish, Miss Crocker.  
GG: Shall I see you tomorrow?  
TT: Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some heart to heart. Too bad it's steeped in lies :3


	18. Chapter 18

Dirk is gone when she visits tomorrow, of course. 

You think she expected it. Jane gives you a glance and a smile when you offer a greeting from the depths of your nest. A sanctuary of sheets and pillows you piled onto the futon when Dirk’s room was just too…

You had returned to the living room to find Equidash waiting, impatiently, on you so you could get back into the life and times of one Twilight Sparkle. Being warm, and comfortable, and surprisingly _safe_ , knowing the warmth at your feet was an unexpectedly reassuring presence...you admit you almost dozed off a few times. 

Almost being a keyword, because Equidash kept to his word and smacked you in the face every time, the last time being when he flatly stated “The Heiress has arrived.”--and what was with that anyway? You’d be surprised if an empire built on the back of baked goods meant anything to a _troll--_ and then pushed himself off the futon and _through_ the fucking TV like an asshole, abandoning you to your fate.

Luckily, aside from a glance towards the hallway, and the bedroom beyond, Jane doesn’t acknowledge the lack of _any_ other people in the building, Strider, Sprite, or otherwise, and just sets to warming up one bowl of soup, placing a wrapped tray of cookies on the counter beside her.

“I made a new batch this morning,” She explains while you drag your aching body up off the couch, tempted by curiosity and a tantalizing aroma, trailing pool-ball sheets like an overly long train across the carpeted apartment floor to poke at them. The foil crinkles up, letting the heat waft as you roll it back, blasting against your face.

Or maybe that’s just her turning up the burner on the stove.

Nope. The cookies are warm and soft beneath your touch, fingers leaving dimples in the white frosting of the one closest to you. You’re a little disappointed they aren’t some vaguely thematically appropriate shape, just round mostly circular. This set is different from the heart-shaped ones you tried days ago, the overwhelmingly sweet scent and crumbling texture replaced with something softer, darker, with chunks of what you can only guess is chocolate, comparing your theoretical knowledge of the visual properties of baked goods to the specimen before you. 

Jane notes your intense interest while she stirs the soup as it warms,”You should wait until after lunch!” She scolds, laughing, gently waving away your searching fingers. The laughter is only a little bit forced. Her smile just a hair too wide. But you notice and it makes you feel guilty, especially as the memory of the hard lump of disappointing dough settles in your gut.

You withdraw your hands back into the tent of your sheets and the hunch of your shoulders probably tells more than you necessarily want it to. She notices. Of course she does. But you can see the moment she decides not to press the issue.

Or at least not that particular issue.

Jane gives you a disapproving stare as you hop up onto the counter and plop your ass down in the empty space running beneath the window. You see it through the reflection in the glass, a ghostly image, washed out and distant. 

A screen.

“How are you feeling?” It _sounds_ genuine. All hells full of polite concern you should be expecting from the mom-friend of the group. You wonder if your question last night-- _your_ question. You don’t even think you’d been trying to pretend at all by then--sticks to her like the way her answer did to you.

GG: A little of both.

“Better,” You answer, modulating your voice to do your best to emulate the state of being known as chipper. Tilting your head, you regard her and the way she casually stirs the pot on the electric burner some feet down the counter. An appliance rarely used unless yo--Dirk wanted to fry the fuck out of a fish. Just gotta sear that goddamn guppy. “A little bored. It seems my nanny fled the barn while I dozed this morning--to which I say, rude.”

“Oh.” The response is more of a quiet sigh than a word in and of itself, and leads you right into defensively crossed arms and a quirked eyebrow. “I’m sorry, AR--” The urge to correct her is rising, but you don’t. That designation does still fit, even if you’re locked out of those functions, clamped down tighter than Roxy and the too long clinging hug she gave you before she managed to tear herself out of your totally stud-like presence. "It wasn't my intention to put you under house arrest. You… I'm sorry. I must come off as such an overbearing busybody, don't I? To both you and Dirk.”

“Dirk deserves it.” You respond automatically. Which is stupid and self-sabotage right there. It isn’t worth encouraging the hovering that will probably get you caught in favor of some mild and largely unimportant zingers he can’t even appreciate. Luckily, the mental reaming you start to give yourself is stopped by the appearance of a small smile. 

“Maybe he does, but boundaries are boundaries. It’s not as if this situation is a new one--at least he's talking to me this time. But enough about him!” That assertion surprises you: all your conversations with Jane end up boiled down to Dirk. It’s just always how things work. “How was your night? You didn't sleep did you?”

You shrug, feeling the movement roll through your aching muscles, the tug of fabric against your bent knee where you caught the train of your sheet-cape in the motions you’d used to acclimate yourself to your counter-top perch. You can talk about yourself, you guess. That’s easy enough. “Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--I am apparently just as bad at actually sleeping as my erstwhile originator, and the ‘sleep’ I have been getting is anything except restful. The couple of times I dozed off I ended up with a tail to the face due to unauthorized magical use.”

“Magic?” You recognize that tone of voice. See her eyebrows rising above the rims of her glasses. 

“Jane. I’m going to need you to put aside your skeptic specs for a moment and just _look at me_ , you see this shit?” You work your arm free from it’s pool-ball patterned penitentiary and wave your glowing hand at your equally luminescent face, “The fact that I’m even here at all, sitting on this counter, talking at you with a mouth-hole and wiggly soundwaves finding purchase in your organic audio receptors you call ears, should be more than enough to make you go, ‘Oh, magic? Is that all?’ We’re in a fucking universe generator where things only make sense if you start looking at shit at a metaphorical level beyond any of our puny human perspective, a little magic is mundane at this point.”

“You just said, ‘our’ not ‘yours’” She points out, and you have to replay your own words in your head to confirm it. And then you shrug because, “It’s true isn’t it? As human as any of you guys, which I suppose is somewhat debatable given the fact that you all burned through your extra lives before the game even fucking began, but that’s just how the cards fall sometimes. I definitely _feel_ more human than machine, and given I have memories of both, I feel I am somewhat knowledgeable on the subject. Believe me, this shit right here is 100% human adjacent, an all inclusive package including all the gross, glorious inefficiencies that come along with inheriting a fleshy outfit from my creator.”

...That comes uncomfortably close to the truth, and you recognize that. But she just scoffs and rolls her eyes at your perceived exaggeration. What reason would she have to suspect anything else?

 _Dirk_ is her friend.

You, while perhaps not reaching that vaunted state due to your acerbic, troll-esque persona, are familiar. She trusts you, even if she, perhaps, should not.

Why would either of you lie to her about something like this? 

It seems this is too easy.

It’s almost painful.

“Just because there is an unexplained game mechanic does _not_ mean we should be chalking everything up as ‘magic.’ Really, AR, I would have expected you of all people to be eager to talk up the internal logic surrounding your …”

“Upgrade?” You offer, burying the faint sense of guilt under exaggerated absurdity. The maw of the gift horse yawns wide before you and you resist the urge to check its teeth. “Birth? Resurrection? You can call me robo-Jesus if you like, isn’t that one of your Old Earth holidays? I died for Dirk’s sins and came back just to haunt him to the end of his days.”

“They aren’t _old_ Earth! They are just holidays! Besides, I’m fairly certain Easter doesn’t ever happen quite this early in March,” Jane shakes her head, the soup bubbling away almost forgotten except for the absentminded rotation of the spoon, “Do you suppose I should bake you a birthday cake?”

“Technically do you think it would even be my birthday? What would be my birthday, Jane? My first day on this physical plane as a separate entity? My first activation? Would I still share Dirk’s or would I get two?” She just laughs at you, and you force your lips into a facsimile of a pout. You honestly don’t know if half of these expressions are coming out even remotely readable, but whatever. “These are important questions, Jane!” 

“Of course they are! It would be nice to have another person join me in the spring months--everyone else is such a December baby it leaves me feeling quite left out!”

“We can be near misses. March 3rd and April 13th.” You muse, scrolling back to the start of the system logs and grabbing the date--still compared to the Old Earth calendar for convenience's sake. You hear a sudden intake of breath. Surprise. And pull yourself out of the logs, blinking as the world fuzzes into focus, with the laughter fading from Jane’s eyes to be replaced by something that has you wondering how you fucked up because she shouldn’t be looking at you like that.

“...it was that long ago? I suppose it would have to be. I had assumed...what was causing the flare-ups then? It seems a bit long to be aftershocks from the...event.”

...fuck. You guess you kinda had implied the situation was more recent than not. That was almost two weeks ago by now. You just shrug, “Unfortunately, the orange does not fall far from the Dirkesian tree. It’s not like self-sabotage is a novel concept. I just didn’t know it was literal and not just metaphorical in this particular instance.” 

Rubbing at your fingers, feeling the channels of energy humming through them. You think about the feeling you get when falling asleep. The glass daggers settling in your fists, edges glistening in red and orange ready to slice and dice yourself into shreds. The pressure builds.

You flex your hand, shaking out an honest to god spark from too warm fingers. Not quite your bright saturated red, and you’re somewhat annoyed to see it come out the more burgundy, almost pink of the glitched out heart on your shirt.

Oh look, you’re a wizard Harry.

Jane, predictably, wants to know what you just did.

The smile you flash her doesn’t reach your eyes, but that’s fine, they are hidden anyway.

“Toldja, it’s fucking _magic._ ”

You let her fuss over you and feed you and resign yourself to the fact that this will be some flavor of the new normal. Being fussed over for “being such a Dirk and pushing yourself like that!” is probably one of the more favorable outcomes your tired brain has been running itself ragged thinking up all night since you aren’t even allowed to sleep anymore. No more natural defrags for you. You just had to ruin it by picking at shit.

It’s even _nice_ , knowing that she sees _you._ That she’s fussing over _you._ Those cookies were made for _you_ and chocolate is your new god and you want to do better, be better. She fills you with anxiety and so much nostalgia it hurts.

You thank any God that is listening when she finally leaves and promises not to drop in unannounced again as long as you or Dirk OR the sprite keep her in the loop. She seems to have taken the fact that you are not a child to heart, and you would feel bad about it if you weren't also paradoxically thankful to have some fucking space again. 

You do keep in touch. Hal shoots the breeze with Jane during lunch, and Dirk has late night conversations. It’s fine. Roxy whines that you’re never online anymore but she totes understands because you’re too busy hanging out with your hunky equestrian boy-toy and you can’t believe you have to tell her to never call him that again.

Only you can, because she’s Roxy, and she laughs at you, elling all the elles in that bright bubble gum pink of hers. She doesn’t stop. 

It makes you feel like things could be normal.

If Dirk would just walk through that door or slide in through the broken window in the living room, you’d be stoked. Beyond stoked. You might even spare him your considerable wrath and let bygones be bygones if he proved you wrong and waltzed the fuck in.

That’d be just _dandy._

Only he doesn’t, and you know he won’t, and you are forced to keep juggling red and orange text during your mandatory visits to Dirk’s computer. You just need to build yourself a hand-held Pesterchum device; this is ridiculous. Sometimes--most times--you don’t want to go to his room. That long hallway becomes a walk of shame.

How the fuck are you supposed to unlock your shades like this? If Dirk is--shouldn’t _you_ have his brainwaves? Or is the magic fueled overlay that contains your psyche just warping that shit beyond the device’s threshold for recognition? Those preferences are stored on your control chip. Untouchable. It ain’t like you can operate on your own brain. And it’s still your brain. Or at least a part of it. That much is obvious when you pull yourself away from reality and back into familiar, if completely fucked up, corridors and functions. Restrained. 

It’s too small for you now. Like trying to fit two people onto a one person bike. Gotta get all hells of intimate up in here.

You pull out immediately, and find yourself hyperventilating. You couldn’t _breathe._

You might be doomed. Banned from the sticking what’s left of your robotic tendrils into the game’s network and allowing yourself to bypass the stiffness of your actual fingers.

You don’t want a lot. Just mobile messaging and brain-to-shades, please and thank you.

Fucking Dirk. Making your life hard even from beyond the grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're catching up to what I have written, haha. I think I juuuust finished chapter 21 last week? Maybe last weekend. Ah well, we'll deal with it when we get there! 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed this one <3


	19. Chapter 19

Desperation shifts to resentment as days pass and things settle. Even if your physical presence is largely accepted by two of your three friends, you can’t allow yourself to relax. Not really. Not while you continue to juggle orange and red. Not while you perpetuate the lie that’s only going to blow up in your face one way or another.

But you aren’t juggling conversations on this day, almost three weeks after you woke up on Dirk’s workbench and definitely didn’t fall out of a chair, not at this very moment, anyway. At this moment, you find yourself alone in front of the TV. It’s the season finale. Maybe you should wait for Equidash, that shit is kinda important, but you don’t because fuck him he just watched this and you just got off a three way conversation with Roxy where you needed to pretend to relay information to yourself while masquerading as someone you are, and are not on so many levels at the same time, its like Schrodinger's levels up in here, and that fucking blows. You feel gross. Guilty. Like you’re looking at yourself in an endless array of fun-house mirrors compounding in on yourself so hard you end up with your head shoved right up your ass. You’re lying. You really can’t get around it, can you? No matter how many hoops you make yourself jump through.

Guilty. Equidash called you guilty. You are guilty. You aren’t guilty. 

Fuck you don’t know, you just want to watch your girls save a kingdom. Maybe you’ll rewind this shit and rewatch one of your favorites from an earlier season. Then at least you don’t have to add any _more_ onto the pile from moving on without him.

Gotta love love-stealing shape-shifters. 

Only, even that betrays you as you see Princess Cadence with Chrysalis's sneer on her sweet face and you want to sink into the futon. You take the remote and smash the pause button, the frame frozen on a grotesque image in the middle of her big Aria. That sneering face reflected a million times over in a prison of crystal. You just stare at that frozen frame as if its the mythical supercomputer that delivered the answer to life, love, and everything.

_Gawd, that shit looks so weird on u Hal._

And then a fucking _hand,_ gnarled and clawed bursts out of the TV, red and shimmering, grasping onto the edge of the screen and _pulling._ An arm, a shoulder, _head._ Broken horns, red-hued rainbow mane. Something thick and dark-red that should probably be black leaking from beneath cracked shades. Lips quirk up around broken shark teeth when you let out a “Motherfucking _creepy pasta_ pony headed asshole! _”_ and nearly jump out of your fucking skin. “What the fuck was that for???”

“You stopped at the good part. I thought your kind enjoyed ‘sick beats’ and lyrical poetry.”

“I just wanted to admire the fucking scenery. The artistry. The pure emotional energy leaping out of that screen. Someone poured their energy and bodily fluids into rendering this very frame, it’s so raw it’s certainly a manifestation of some sort of inner turmoil. It deserves some appreciation!” 

It’s got absolutely nothing about the fact that Chrysalis pulling her sheep's clothing deal is making you feel worse on your own.

_Dirk is like talking to a brick wall and you just go ham on that shit._

You would be spending a couple hours of your copious free time practicing expressions at yourself in the bathroom mirror if it weren’t for the fact that you’re still avoiding your reflection. Ironic, how something you once found so captivating now pushes you away. Even leaving your hair a gel-less mess, you look like him. Because you are.

A twisted reflection. Stealing a life. Stealing love. You aren’t about to up and run off with his lover--you still won’t unblock Jake--but that shit hits too close to home right now.

You still haven’t made a decision.

No, that isn’t right. You kind of already did, didn’t you?

You did it the moment you started lying to Dirk’s friends.

Will you be Queen Chrysalis, and take it all to sustain yourself?

Maybe you should just follow her example and just own the fucking thing. Hal formerly known as AR Strider, body thief extraordinaire. Too late Dirk, bye, you had your chance. Shouldn’t have shown the monster mercy.

Maybe the skeletons wouldn’t be doing any sort of identity theft. You already opened the max number of credit cards. Racking up that interest. Charging them with your friend’s good will.

“Hmph. The parallels are superficial at best. You are being childish.” You just respond with a shrug and a wave of the remote as if saying, ‘my clicker, my rules dude.’ but that would _really_ be childish if you actually said that. You say it anyway because you can. 

The sprite exhales with a snort and pulls his long snakelike tail from the screen, leaving an afterimage of red smeared all over Cadence’s green eyed face. A fucking ghost. He nudges your feet off his spot, which you allow. The smartass thing then would be to claim his lap in recompense, but you don’t, allowing your banished legs to flop off the futon and sort of dangle in the air. He only seems to tolerate you stretching out during episodes and whelp, you did just pause that didn’t you. 

After a period of awkward silence where the only sound is the faint whistling sound of him breathing between his crooked and broken teeth, he surprises you by speaking.

“You were right. The quest bed has been used.”

You flick your eyes from the ceiling down to him, “No shit. Is that where you’ve been sneaking off while Jane visits? Had to see for yourself if I knew what the fuck I was talking about?”

“You are being unnecessarily confrontational.” You imagine he’s rolling his eyes. You probably would be, if you were him. You really do like eye rolling a lot for someone who will never actually had been able to pull one off unless you’re simulating it through a combination of willpower and LEDs. You wonder if you could mimic other expressions that way. “I merely wished to confirm for myself.”

“Did that confirmation lead to any insights?” Maybe there’s a little too much bitterness seeping through, but this episode--one that you otherwise would have greatly enjoyed, it is your favorite after all, the music is dope--is leaving one hell of a sour taste in your mouth. “Trigger any flashes of sprite knowledge, or perhaps a sign-posty clue as to where the fuck to go next in this Where’s Waldo of Dirkesian proportions?””

"Your quest is in Flux." the unexpected response startles you. Equidash has his arms crossed in his favorite thinking pose, the tension from the contracted muscles beading into little droplets against taut, glowing skin. Which you hadn't been watching in fascination. Nope.

"Flux as in Flux capacitor or Flux as in offset from a predetermined state and therefore covered by the same principle of the damn cat until shit hits the fan and someone pops open that box? Or neither because the cat requires at least knowledge of both end states and we know fuck all."

"Why do you ask a question when we both know you already know the answer?" 

"Unknown outcomes it is, then." you sigh. Dashie sure doesn't roll with things the way dirk did. Had. Fuck. "Can’t you tell that through the systems? Aren't you supposed to have a list of cryptic hints to push m--the player in the right direction? I gotta say, y'all are slacking in the talking guidebook part of the job. I still could return you like a used toaster, you know." 

“Your levity in this situation is not appreciated.” Equidash informs you, “The Noble’s quests are largely intended as an endless holding pattern until such a time as your true task begins, but the game still caters them to your own personal growth. The original hints and directions were trampled mercilessly under a herd of stampeding musclebeasts when your reckless actions threw off the entire equilibrium.”

You just. Wave your hand in his direction. Because you can. If you can’t annoy Dirk to hell you have to get your jollies on somewhere else. It’d be fuckin’ criminal to troll Jane after everything you’ve put her through, and it’s not like you should dump your metric ton of horseshit on Roxy alone. “I totally planned to die in the one place where it might have possibly mattered, which also seems to have resulted in super powers I evidently have no fucking idea how to use. That’s the source of all this isn’t it?”

“It is a STRONG likelihood,” The sprite grumbles, and you raise an eyebrow at the distasteful curl of his lip. “You seem to have inherited some ability to manipulate your own soul from the endeavor.”

“What cow-pie did you just step in, Dashie? You don’t even have hooves. It can’t be that bad.”

“Ascending to the god-tiers shouldn’t be on _accident_.” 

And it shouldn’t have been you.

“Yippee, and through that accidental superhero origin story, I gained magical powers that let me steal the flesh suit of my creator, if not outright erase him.” You bite out bitterly, “It’s totally worth all this fucking stress. I still don’t know how the hell I’m going to tell my--his friends.” 

You aren’t supposed to be the player.

“You do not seem to put much faith in your own relationships.” The unwanted comment from the potted plant in the room earns him a glare, “Do you truly think they would toss you aside so easily? The care shown to you by the Heiress and the rogue clearly indicate some investment in your continued well being, even as you claim neither in a quadrant despite the obvious conciliatory overtones in your interactions.”

“I’m just a placeholder. A ‘burden of care,’ if you would. I bet you Jane would nurse _Caliborn_ back to health if she found him like she found me. The moment they’re convinced I’m not gonna keel over--or that I _deserve_ to keel over--I’m 84% certain any such courtesy will be revoked.” The words feel dry in your mouth, “Especially if it comes out that I killed him.”

“You did not.” The deep rumble has you propping yourself up in a flash. He wasn’t looking at you. You want to reach out and shake the motherfucker. What the hell.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” You repeat the thought out loud because it deserves to be vocalized. Again.

The sprite shrugs. You feel the movement before you see it.

“You can’t just say shit like that and then not elaborate Dashie. It’s rude as fuck.” 

“It is well within my prerogative to do so.” Equidash responds primly, “Expected, even, as befitting both my prototyping and role in this farce of a session. Take the statement as you will, but I am _certain_ you did not kill Dirk Strider.” 

“Maybe I just need to finish the job, then.” You snap and then freeze. There’s a pause hanging in the room. A pause so overdue you’re surprised the water hasn’t broken all over the floor from how pregnant it is. 

You hadn’t really meant to say that out loud. Now that you have, the words just fall. Meaty little things. So heavy they make your skin crawl.

“It is a reasonable path to take given your attempts at restoring his autonomy are turning out to be self-destructive at best, and futile at worst. Restoration would not be a strength for one derivative from a prince.” To your surprise, that statement doesn’t seem to surprise the troll at all. “Perhaps, given time and materials I could create a robotic stand in that you could control remotely?”

“Hell. Fucking. _No.”_ You hiss, the strength of your denial hitting you like a bug hitting a windshield of a truck going upwards of a hundred miles an hour, and you are the bug splattering your guts all over the glass, “That’s a code red catastrophic danger warning. I don’t want to continue Dirk’s legacy of coughing up yet another splinter just because it’s convenient. I’m _not_ pulling the trigger on yet another ethically dubious project that could--who am I kidding, it’s not even a could. It _will_ result in yet another copy of myself. And then what? I’d still be lying my ass off. They’d find out eventually and then we’d be right up shit creek again, just with another resentful baby robrodirk around because none of us like playing second fiddle. It wouldn’t bring him _back._ ”

“You are committed to the culling then?” A raised, red-hued eyebrow. “It does seem the most expedient way to remove you from the burden of maintaining those relationships.”

“Ffff--I don’t know.” The exhale is hissed out through clenched teeth. You let the weight of your arm flop, pushing the metal and glass into your skin. “At least if I do it now Jane won’t have to deal with a funeral on her birthday--Is three weeks enough time to grieve and have a happy birthday fun bash? Asking for a friend. Anyway, she’d do a funeral too, mark my words. Even if there isn’t a body, Jane’d probably insist on a ceremony. She’d give a speech and end it with waterworks and then I’d probably feel guilty enough to give her an awkward as hell hug because Dirk isn’t much of a comforter and I’m even less.”

“Hmph. Dead is dead.” Equidash rumbles, more of a nicker, a really low one, The bassiest of ponies, tossing his head. Rainbow Dash’s more dainty muzzle doesn’t really fit sometimes. You try to imagine him with Big Mac’s snoz and just--can’t. Dashie is Dashie. “I see little use in holding a corpse-party. Even if there was a body to process, they are better left for the Drones to clean up and recycle. That is what’s proper.”

“Proper.” You make a face--what face you don’t know. Even if you could guess, the whole thing is ruined by the fact that your arm bisects that expression cleanly, “I’m the last one who should be talkin’ human funerary rites and the grieving process given I’m not even a month old right now, but that shit ain’t for the victim’s benefit, I’d wager it’s more something _she’d_ be compelled to do, ironically because it’s _proper._ And she’s, you know, grieving. It’s the thing humans do when grieving. That shit offers closure to the relatives and friends more than anything. Haven’t you grieved for anything? _”_

He’s so quiet you almost wonder if you’d offended him so much he just up and left. Almost, because you know he didn’t. You can feel the humming warmth of his side against your knee.

You finally push yourself up to look at him, he’s leaned back against the futon, staring up at the ceiling--you would almost say pensively.

“There are...some deaths I regret.”

 _“_ Oh yeah?I thought you trolls didn’t do softer emotional attachments. Especially not with the ease you bandied around the word culling back there.”

“The weak feed the STRONG.” Equidash retorts with force, but you see him wilt a little, pulling that off-white red-tinted towel from nowhere and dab at his face again, the thick liquid seeping from beneath his cracked glasses getting smeared onto the towel, “As it has always been on Altequestria. But some individuals offer services that are beyond the hierarchy, and it would be foolish not to acknowledge and maintain that asset when possible. However, when a rival falls, they are forgotten except for the lessons their defeat teaches.”

Lessons? 

“What lessons could I possibly learn from this shit??? Don’t try and save the shitty knock off version of yourself, it’ll come bite you in the ass? Is that what this is telling me?” Oh fuck you’re sparking. That sure gets the sprite’s attention. You suck in a breath. In for four. 

Hold.

Out for seven. Exhaling like a slow ass fucker because you are vibrating, feeling like you want to burst.

“You promised the heiress you would refrain from unnecessary magical expenditure.” He regards you disapprovingly.

If you say anything, you feel like you’re going to explode. So you roll to your feet, and leave.

The sprite doesn’t follow you, even as you slam the door shut and let yourself out onto the open roof. You don’t even think of it as you pull yourself into the struts of the broadcast tower.

Don’t save him. It’ll bite you in the ass.

He saved you. Look at how that turned out.

You _know_ you could find him.

Buried under your bullshit.

Maybe dead, and all that’s left is a husk.

But at least you’d find him.

You’re just an overlay.

It seems very likely that your unceasing digging into that overlay was directly _hurting_ you.

_Don’t save him._

Fuck if you’d ever listen to yourself.

For the first time you consciously grab the energy flowing through your robo-veins, the power of a god of souls, and maybe, maybe something else. Something buried. Something a step to the left, still locked up tight. A potential unrealized, but ripe for the taking. Angrily, at Dirk, at you, at Equidash, you just crack that shit wide open.

There’s a scream.

Heat.

It’s nothing like your puny daggers.

You weren’t built for this. You know that now. Before this you didn’t know what it was really like to be a Prince _._ To break and smash and shatter. You’re a pauper. A thief, stealing into the bedchambers at night to dress in those princely robes, but still a thief all the same. You pick and you prod and you _scratch_ , searching for an opening. _Making_ one if you have to. Selfishly carving out a place for yourself within the confines of the narrative. So you can _exist_.

Not to destroy.

That scream.

It’s your voice.

It burns.

You aren’t just slicing through layers upon layers of yourself, you’re setting everything on fire. The real nuclear option. Everything goes fuckin’ supernova and you just white the fuck out.

You dream of Jake English. He reaches out for you. Trying to catch you. You think he says your name, choked off as you’re buried under the incoming wave and pushed down into the darkness and nothingness again.

You fall.

Shattered to pieces, you dream of nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> smh @ hal you're supposed to learn from your mistakes not make them *worse*
> 
> Equidash is really growing on me though. *pats him*
> 
> Thank you so much for reading <3 We're about three chapters away from what I have done. Chapter 23 is giving me a runaround, but I'll keep working at it!


	20. Chapter 20

You’re surprised you wake up at all, much less without a giant goose egg growing on your scalp. A big ol’ red bump sticking out of your abysmally kept hair. Dirk would disown you if he could see you now 

You…

Probably would have deserved it, if you had.

Did, deserve it even. You’re a fucking moron.

You push yourself off the concrete, and yep you’ve been here long enough for the blood to have dried on the tiles. You need to get yourself a rag and a bucket and mop that shit up before you get another visitor. It's pretty obvious, and wouldn't fail to get a bloodhound back on your tail. You only recently managed to shake her. 

A quick run through with your fingers, you wince at the way the dried mats flake away at the slightest touch. Fuck. You actually need to wash your hair this time.

Honestly, you probably need to take a fucking shower to get yourself even remotely presentable. And being presentable is good. Presentable means you can take care of yourself. Taking care of yourself means you don't act like a fucking moron and do whatever you just did. Especially not when you’ve wedged yourself on a thin metal beam some ten feet up in the air. 

Your head--along with a good chunk of the bare skin on your arms, you probably scraped the hell out of them--aches faintly, but it is a really grounded ache, at least traceable back to the impact of your skull with the surface instead of the nebulous, causeless tension headaches that have been your constant companion since you woke up weeks ago. 

What were you even trying to prove?

You pull yourself to your feet woozily, but if nothing else, all this falling over and somehow managing to function with a constant anvil pounding in your skull is merely working to make you a pro at getting back up again. 

A valuable life lesson, if you were inclined to be optimistic. Which you are not, so you mostly just feel annoyed.

You pass Equidash, still on the couch. He looks up at you, at first bored, and then suddenly interested when noticing the rusty red that coated and stained the otherwise colorless white of your hair. Pop culture said headwounds bled like a mother fucker, so you probably looked as ghastly as you feel. It’s stupid how easy it is for you to read the intense observersation in the perked, quivering position of the ears despite him being entirely accross the room.

“Don’t say a word.” You decide to grouse instead, pushing through the silence and to the hallway. He doesn’t. It doesn’t make you feel better. 

You don’t think it would have worked if he were more Rainbow Dash than troll. The troll was pretty fucking heavy in that formula, and also apparently the one with a _thing_ about obedience.

You’d feel bad about that, if it weren’t fuckin’ useful.

You emerge eventually, un-electrocuted--dirk's design held up despite being a rush job. Good to know. You wipe away the water beading on the glass that both protects and cages you, toweling out the proverbial rats nest that is your hair. You both feel much better as well as ridiculously exposed, as if a layer of something had been peeled away leaving your skin crisp and cool and strangely tingling in the krypton laced air. 

You run your fingers through the damp mop, catching on snarled hair and working through it with twitching motions. 

You miss your hair. Dirk's hair gel, stolen from the past with Roxy's assistance, sits on the edge of the sink waiting for you. You reach for it, twisting the cap, feeling the slick, thick clear mixture clinging to your fingers. 

Fingers that send red light dancing through the styling compound. You glance up and away, catching another faint red glow through the fog of war misting across the mirror and obfuscating the details, leaving you a faint, glowing silhouette. 

You wash the thick material off your hand with a shock of cold water, throwing the black tank top back on over top the maze of lines that is your chest-- _a tangled knot at your core, overlaid by a beating heart_. Your hair is a limp, but clean, mess as you finally leave the bathroom. Fresh faced and chipper and ready to face the day. 

Not. 

This is the last time, you promise yourself, elbowing open the door to the bedroom. You can not do this again. You're tired of it. It's one thing to be reckless, it's another to be a fucking moron. It might be a flaw in your original template that gave you the tendency to ignore your own danger if it leads you to an answer--and you _know_ you were close. Could taste it in the fleeting moments before you… Fell.--but you're supposed to be better than that. You resented Dirk's recklessness. He had everything you wanted and thought nothing of throwing it away. 

You're the one with the keys now. You shouldn't be so damn eager to crash the car like some overzealous kid who just got their learners. Not even the full on license; no minors allowed to ride shot-gun, get out of the damn car Dirk you aren't 18 yet. 

Of course there's no answer, but you pause to listen anyway. You can't help that faint flutter of hope. 

Hope. God. Why the fuck would you dream of Jake?

You definitely pulled off something with the prince of heart horseshit though. You'd felt something inside you _crack_ , even if it didn't quite break. This is bone deep knowledge that you're far too tired to try and chase down in the depths of whatever intuition was downloaded into your brain when you fucking _died._ The God-tiers were the gateway to directly manipulating the aspects, according to Dashie, and your aspect was your own fucking _soul._ Not something you really should be waving your magic wand at while speaking in tongues made of horseshit.

Dirk’s a prince. You’d just fuck shit up. Did. Definitely already did, you think back to the pounding in your head spreading to your very core. To the feel of an ice-cold hand--Jane’s hand--against your sweat slicked, too warm forehead as your efforts did their best to tear you apart.

You…

Probably need a distraction.

Roxy was always up for a distraction. You let yourself flop into the computer chair, keenly aware of your _weight_ and how the slight momentum you had sent the chair spinning lazily. You allow yourself to indulge in one (1) rotation before you dig your sock-covered toes into the fibers of the carpet to stop yourself in the proper configuration. Your therapy smuppet--ironically, an orange one--hangs over the rim of the monitor.

You pat the little guy on the nose. He squeaks.

Then you exhale and type in the password.

The deluge of messages has slowed down some now that you’re in regular contact (both color variations of you) with your friends, some of that anxious worry on their part bleeding away. It probably helps now that they know you aren’t in fact plugged into pesterchum 24/7, and so any silence on your part probably just means you, Hal, are actually just not at your computer, and everyone knows what kind of an avoidant fuckwit Dirk is being. 

(Would this count as slandaring his good name at this point? Fuck it you don’t care: You have power of attorney by virtue of being the dude in more ways than you want to admit.)

You try not to think about the twist in your gut one night when Jane messaged you-- _you_ , asking after Hal first--double checking that Dirk did indeed come home and was okay, because you forgot to message her around a reasonable time. Of course, she believed you when you told her he was holed up in the living room since you were on the computer. She didn’t even question it.

They believe you. 

They take your word as an eyewitness account, and don’t try and perform an intervention because they _trust_ you to keep an eye on him. You’re positive one, or both of them, would be camping out in your living room waiting to ambush him with friendship otherwise. It’s revolting. It’s so sweet it makes you want to gag.

You still don’t understand.

Why the fuck do they believe you???

And why the fuck are you dwelling on this now? You need a distraction, yes, but this train of thought is just pulling you back down into the spiral of Dirk-related bullshit you want to be distracted from in the first place.

Both of your friends are online when you get Pesterchum loaded--Jake is greyed out, but you _did_ block him so you wouldn’t actually know. You notice a single flashing message waiting for you.

Of course you can’t resist it. You don’t even try.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] begins pestering  timeausTestified [TT]

GG: Hal? Are you alright?

It’s time stamped a good hour ago, before your shower. You made good time, you think, phantom memories of marathon showers playing across your skin as you--Dirk--just let yourself _not_ exist under the spray. You shoot off a greeting to Roxy--who is idle, but knowing her she’ll be around shortly anyway. The only thing to keep your friend away from the computer for long would be if she and Jane were both off playing the game, or sleeping. 

TT: I’m going to assume Dashie snitched on me.  
TT: I’m fine.  
GG: He’s just concerned about you, that’s all!  
GG: You should be more careful :(  
GG: Even you don’t really know what those abilities are doing to you.  
TT: You can just call it magic, Jane. It won’t hurt you.

You make a mental note to get Equidash back for that. Exactly how, you aren’t entirely sure yet. At least he didn’t mention that you brained your head on the concrete, you know there’s limits to what his Loyalty will allow him to sell you out on. You doubt Jane would be this calm if she knew exactly how far you’d fallen. Or about the blood smeared on the concrete. You really should go clean that up.

Loyalty and obedience. How much of that is the Sprite taking shit literally and how much of it was from the original troll? It’s not like you have a very big sample size to compare to. At least the other two were made of People (if fucked up ones) instead of a Person and an Idea. How much of that idea affects the person?

The itch in your brain eases as the immediateness of an answer fades, and you note Roxy’s status flip green again. As anticipated, you quickly get a

TG: smup

And you settle in to respond with a smile.

TT: Can you ever spell sup correctly or am I just special?  
TG: u kno ur special handsome *wonk*  
TG: …  
TG: gawd this is awkward now that uve got one hot bod isnt it  
TT: You think I’m hot, Roxy?  
TG: i mean u were totes burning up when i last saw u but thats beside the point  
TG: u were always steamin in my minds eye now its just a bajillion times more real  
TT: *places a hand tenderly on your forehead to check your temperature* Hmm, 99.1. I would put it at a 93.4% certainty that you are blushing at this very moment.  
TG: fuck yea im blushin  
TG: im blushin so hard i look liek a tomat  
TT: It seems we may need to rethink the flirtLARPing, which is a pity. I found it an enjoyable past-time.  
TT: It would not do to cause you to explode from embarrassment.  
TT: Circumstances have changed, after all.  
TG: yea maybe  
TG: gotta tiptoe about that line in the sand  
TG: at least until i can see u without seeing dirk  
TG: gawd i dont need to come face 2 face with those feelins nope

You know about her feelings of course. You’ve talked with her. Worked with her on them. Given her an outlet, because you craved the feeling of being wanted more than you cared about the fact that Dirk’s (your) love for Jake still burned a knot in the back of your mind. Even three years and watching (and scheming) to get Dirk together with him hadn’t changed something so integral to your source-code.

You were born loving Jake English. You’d always thought you’d die loving Jake English.

Circumstances aside, you _aren’t_ just a snapshot of a 13 year old brain anymore: lovesick and lonely, digitized into code nestled at the core of all your self-evolving algorithms. You’re...alive. You have a soul, confirmed by your resident soul chomping creepy pasta pony. And living things change.

You can change. Maybe.

You just need to survive Dirk’s death.

TG: speakin of feelins

The notification draws you out of the odd sense of peace you’d found with that final thought. A decision finally settling into place after days of deliberation. You just need to plan how to get things rolling.

TG: i kno this is none of my beeswax  
TG: outside of the fact that they are my friends and therefore are totes my beeswax especially while they are bein idiots  
TG: do u think dirk is gonna unblock jake any time soon?

You freeze at the mention of Jake’s name. A flinch sending a shiver through the part of you that runs orange at the implication of needing to take on the color. Your fingers are stiff, and you’re oddly surprised to find red light, like usual, shimmering softly against your keyboard. Red. Not orange. They’ve never _been_ orange. You force your stiff fingers to move and respond.

TT: Why are you asking me this?  
TT: I’m not Dirk.  
TG: i kno u arent and i kno its weird but liek  
TG: ure the only one i can really talk about this shit to u know?  
TG: its just with janeys birthday coming up  
TG: im worried hal  
TG: if they dont figure this shit out then well have a drama bomb goin off and i dont really think its fair to make my best gal pals shindig ground zero ya feel me  
TG: and thats if they both come!  
TG: janeys worried dirk wont come if jake is and u kno we trust u but its one thing to hear aboot ur friends wellbein and another to confirm it for urself  
TG: an shes almost ready to ask jake not to come an given how upset jake is over bein blocked in the first place its just liek getting double darnned blocked  
TT: Jake’s upset over being blocked?  
TT: I thought he’d enjoy the peace and quiet.  
TG: hal!  
TG: u kno that wasn’t necessary!  
TT: I’m not sorry.  
TT: A whole lot of this shit is his fault.  
TG: look i kno i dont know the whole story but liek  
TG: u dont have him up in ur chat windows polishin his glasses over how hes bollocksed things up rite good this time  
TG: it doesnt help that he seems to think somethins wrong with dirk  
TG: liek straight up floodin my windows in a panic  
TG: i talked him down i think but gawd  
TT: Dirk is fine.

No. No he’s not. You’re going to kill him off remember?

You think of the snatches of your dream. Of a brief glimpse through a curtain of darkness. Of Jake. Of his hand reaching out to you.

The sound of your--

But it wouldn’t be your name, would it?

This has nothing to do with you, except for the fact that you kicked that hornet’s nest.

TT: I don’t know what you want from me, Roxy.  
TT: Do you want me to pester him?  
TT: I’m 96% certain any attempts on my part to reassure him would be met with hostility.  
TT: Unless you are asking me to deliberately change colors in order to do so, in which case I’d be “up to something” as you like to put it, and potentially enmeshing myself into this quagmire of a confrontation I would much rather keep myself out of.  
TT: Jake is frighteningly good at calling me on any slight deviation into my own natural speech pattern.  
TT: Which is impressive when the percentage of accuracy in regards to my function is hardcoded to never fall below the 90% threshold of indistinguishability.  
TT: At least it was. I suppose I could attempt a complete reversal in regards to typing style and humor for scientific purposes.  
TG: no no im not askin u to do anythin hal  
TG: specially not that  
TG: i mostly just want ur opinion  
TG: livin with the dude n all  
TG: n if u think its safe to float the idea to him  
TG: im sorry this is stupid  
TG: its not fair to drag u into this  
TG: i guess jakes pesters are gettin 2 me  
TT: What’s he saying?  
TG: nu’uh thas expensive info right there jr  
TG: plus idek its jake so i need 2 read it a bajillion tiems to make sure the thoughts bein followed n the nuances locked down  
TT: I could help. Analyze it by running it through my English translator.  
TT: I have terabytes of text logs as a starting sample right here on this computer.  
TG: its also private  
TG: u didnt want to get involved remember?  
TT: I don’t.  
TT: But I will, one way or another.  
TT: I’m a nosy motherfucker.

It’ll come back to you eventually anyway.

Not that you can tell Roxy that.

TG: u really r lmao  
TG: hrmm  
TG: idk hal it really does get personal  
TG: jakey is worrying himself 2 the point where he aint sleepin right  
TG: tho today is the first tiem he sounded that panicked  
TG: mostly jus sayin some weird shit  
TG: kinda liek how dirk is sayin weird shit  
TG: theyre both two peas in a weird pod that r doin their best to ignore the fact that there r other peas in the same enclosed space resulting in a sorry squashed lookin pod  
TG: is dirk even mad about jake nymore idek  
TG: between u me and the martini im totes not cravin rn i cant tell anymore he just seems mad and thats worryin me  
TG: gawd if i hadnt dumped all that liqour i think id be off the wagon and under the wheels by now  
TG: ive been tempted 2 tryn alchemize it from scratch

…

TT: Dirk isn’t…

You hesitate. The truth buzzing in your fingertips. Ready to flow out into red text and release this annoying ass burden from your psyche.

There’s no point in telling the truth, is there? You’ve made up your mind. You just need to iron out the timeline and then you could be done in less than a week. Then you can act just as shocked and worried when you report that Dirk didn’t come home, and you’ll never have to be orange again. You could just be the sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Just a little longer and you won’t have to worry about jumping on the tracks of the speeding train that is Dirk’s (your) feelings for Jake.

Who knows, you might even catch him on a rebound although that stray thought makes your stomach clench painfully so yeah no that isn’t a good idea at all..

Roxy shows admirable restraint in that she isn’t badgering you to complete your thoughts by now. You thought she would have. Maybe she’s using the time to comb through her other conversations as well.

TT: Dirk isn’t here right now, but…  
TT: You should come over.  
TG: why hal i thot we decided there would be no more bootycalls  
TT: The booty is being called so loud right now the Condesce can hear it from hell.  
TT: I am being sincere though.  
TT: It may be that sharing meatspace allows for emotional support on both our parts, and…

You run a hand through your damp hair.

TG: i can hear u thinkin from here dummy  
TG: u could just say u r lonely  
TG: id lov to get away from pesterchum for a bit  
TG: jakes messages just keep starin at me and i don wanna just foist him off on jane u feel  
TT: Foist away, Lalonde. Ms. Crocker wouldn’t hesitate to tag in if you need a break and you know it. We can kick Equidash off the couch and take over for a proper mid-day sleep over or whatever normal meatspace human teens do.  
TG: ill totes bring the nail polish  
TT: Sweet. Make mine red.  
TG: fur realsies tho i dun wanna kick out ur sprite  
TG: he doesnt really seem to liek me much  
TG: which is totes not fair  
TG: he answers janeys messages  
TG: and never mine  
TG: mayb i shuld ask fefeta maybe she knows him  
TG: they were all friends once werent they???  
TT: I would defer to your judgement on that one, Equidash doesn’t much like discussing his existence pre-creepypasta. I don’t know if he got along with many people before his corpse got shoved into a sprite.  
TT: The dude has some messed up views on friendship.  
TG: thas some cultural insensitivity righ thar buster  
TG: tho ima be honest i think fefetasprite is the outlier when it comes to troll personalities  
TG: she is too cute fur this world ya feel me?  
TT: Kitty amazing.  
TT: I would have thought the introduction of a cartoon show based on friendship into his prototyping and the last few weeks of intense study on the matter would help with that, but it only seems to have confused him.  
TT: Whatever. We’ll still evict him. He can go be a Celestia knock off somewhere else.  
TG: hal i kno im not hip with the kids when it comes to the pones but im p sure equidash aint the princess  
TG: not even the baby princess  
TT: Oh no, he isn’t thank god, although I think being a sprite gives him some limited conjuring abilities that behave similarly to the unicorn half of an alicorn’s magic.  
TT: Jesus Christ on a roomba Roxy, can you even imagine how insufferable he’d be with Celestia’s power and authority behind him???  
TT: Oh who am I kidding, he’d still get off on being bossed around. Maybe to the point of orgasm given the increased power differential.  
TG: hal!  
TG: tmi omg  
TT: Sorry. I’ll reign in my brutal honesty.  
TT: He’s just acting like a fucking cryptic asshole right now.  
TT: I would have made a better sprite than he is.  
TG: udve made the best sprite hal  
TG: tho ngl im glad u got such a sweet bod instead  
TG: more eye candy for me *wonk*  
TT: Why, Roxy, are we back to casual flirting so soon?  
TG: *wonks harder*  
TG: gawd tho its gonna be so weird seeing the both of you side by side  
TG: u kno ur invited to janes party too right  
TG: dont think i havent noticed uve been avoiding talking about it  
TG: u could even bring eq as ur plus one!  
TT: Wouldn’t I be Dirk’s plus one?  
TG: ur invited hal u get yer own plus one.  
TG: bring that hunky equestrian boy-toy of urs  
TT: With that mental image, I now have to go bleach my brain.  
TG: jus make sure ur done by the time i get there we got some srs hangouts to do  
TG: see u soon <3  
TG: jus lemme finish up some things n ill be over

_Its gonna be so weird seeing the both of you side by side._

“It seems we won’t have to worry about that.” You push yourself away from the computer, and go inform Equidash of your guest.

His eyes bore into you thoughtfully as you sit down at your (Dirk’s) other workbench in the living room and mess with shit. Nah, probably not into you. Through you maybe. You wonder what he’s seeing with those freaky black soul stealing eyes of his. You close yours and try to visualize what your soul would look like, trying not to think back to the red on black--a mirror that didn’t reflect anything but _you._ All you can think of are the fragmented threads of your dreams fluttering around you.

Tangling

Strangling

The slightest gasp of air before being dragged back beneath the inevitability of the oncoming wave

What place is there for mortals in the well of a god?

Wouldn’t they just.

Drown.

Your hands just work, the lag time between your brain and your hands next to nothing when you aren’t bothering to think about it at all. It feels...natural.

You’re alone when your guest arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to add notes.
> 
> Whups XD
> 
> I'm working on chapter 25 rn! It's camp nano so I'm hoping I can refresh my buffer while work is up in the air.


	21. Chapter 21

Traveling through the gates always throws you for a loop. It shouldn’t be all that much different from hoppin’ between your voidy fenestrated windows in theory. You fall in one window and you keep fallin’, then you shoot out the other ready and rarin’ to pet some mutant kitties (you miss your mutant kitties. You hope the chess dudes didn’t eat them all when you left. You don’t want to think about the Miles tearing shit apart.) But nop, that is not the case at all. The gates kinda spin you, throw you around before slingshotting you out in a total free-fall, some tens of meters above the ground, in an unfamiliar world.

An entirely new planet, in fact! Though you suppose it ain’t that new considering you’ve been here before. Like once. You got your own little solar system to play in and ya’ll really don’t travel much, do you?

Your name is Roxy Lalonde, resident fun as fuck cat-lovin’ wizard admirin’ rifle totein’ badass, and you’re here to totally hang out with your robff. And it totally still counts because he said it did so there. 

You can also totes fly, so the free-fall really isn’t that bad. Gravity expedites your trip toward the roof, but you say nop and turn it off just in time to land delicately on the roof. Boo yeah, 10/10 landing Ro-Lal for the WIN. 

You meander your way towards the door, down the stairs. It’s quiet. Kinda dark and dingy, but hey, you can’t really talk. You’re just lucky your house was built with rust-resistant materials, Dirk’s kinda wasn’t, and all the damage was done long before you lot ever got dropped in the middle of the ocean. 

Anyway, you really aren’t here to judge the decor, even if your non-existent cat ears are perking with delight at the idea of snoopin’ around your friend’s digs. This place, for most of the time you’d been in the same meatspace, had been exclusively the Strilish household and you ain’t stickin’ your nose in during their honeymoon hell naw yuck.

Ew, you would rather not think about that rn, thanks, considering the amount of mess that the DirkJake 5ever ship is in at the moment. You’re just here to chill and this door is between you and chill-town. You kick the dang door down and announce your arrival to the world, “Lalonde in the HOUSE!”

You don’t really expect an answer, since you assumed Hal would be in the bedroom on the computer, since that seemed to be his natural resting place. The TV is off. The sprite is nowhere in sight. It’s dead silent, except for a faint buzz you recognize as the white noise made by inactive electronics. 

Despite the lack of reaction, it doesn’t take long for you to realize you aren’t alone. You almost think the figure hunched in front of the workbench in the corner of the living room is your other wayward friend, the slippery eel none of you have been able to wrangle.

But his hair is far too light, even in the weird half-light from the purple-green-red sky outside. Too limp and ungelled, washed out and white as snow. Red light spills from bare shoulders, standing out harshly from abnormally pale af skin where it should be tanned and unblemished by admittedly rad robo tats. 

He doesn’t turn around to face you, too focused on whatever he’s hunched over. You pout. God he’s such a Dirk. “Haaaaal! I don’t even get a hello? I thought I’d be worth a hug at least considerin’ how insistent u were in arrangin’ this booty call. Well the booty has arrived and is ready for smackage.”

Ew no, you were supposed to stop that weren’t you? You should apologize. With Hal it was easy to pretend cuz nothin could come of it except some words.

Or at least it couldn’t.

C’mon Ro-Lal get it together, you’re here to see your bud not think sadly about not being able to smooch him. You’ve already gone through this with Dirk.

“Hellooooo? Earth to Hal? Do you copy--” Oh there you go, he flinches and shakes his head, as if coming out of a daze. You eye the glowing tats you can see, and granted you aren’t really an expert in what is exactly too glowy, but he doesn’t seem to be as bad as the last time you saw him. Which happened to be the first time. You’re across the room and peering over his shoulder at the small, compact mess of parts and wires spilling out over the desk. You don’t ask for permission, you just slap your hand on his forehead, “Least u don’t feel like ur tryin’ to burn the skin off my hand today. U sure ur ok?”

He suffers the attention for a moment before sliding free from the contact, “Yes. I assure you I have refrained from the behavior that led to my unsavory previous state. I was just exploring the practical applications of a working meditation, also known as ‘tinkering’. I’m afraid I did not hear you come in.”

“I yelled it loud n clear. Ur slippin’ mr multitask. What was that thing u’d always tell Jake? ‘Constant vigilance?’”

“Brobot was instructed to never initiate an ambush inside his home, and guess where the fuck we are? This is a gross breach of the rules, Ms Lalonde.”

“Whatevs ure the one who invited me.” Your fingers tap lightly against his shoulder, your attention lingering on the faint heat radiating from the mess of lines and the way the light colors the tips of your fingers. It’s totes rad as hell. Very sci-fi lookin’. You dig it. “So whatcha up to in all that mess.”

“A mobile communication device.” Hal mutters, “It’s frustrating needing to rely on Equidash to accommodate me, or be tethered to the computer in Dirk’s room. As you can imagine, I’m quite sick of the atmosphere. Luckily there’s plenty of random parts lying around, and I remember how to build such a rudimentary wireless device in my sleep.” 

As he talks he twirls the mini screwdriver in his fingers to punctuate just how easy such a task is for a robogineer such as himself, only to fumble the thing and have it drop to the surface of the bench. He gives it a frustrated sigh, “Goddamn it.”

You pat that same shoulder in sympathy, “The inefficient fleshy interfaces do kinda suck. I tol’ja you’ll get there. As far as yer life in physicality is concerned yer still a baby. Yer allowed to be uncoordinated. It takes practice.”

“At least that shit is getting better. This--I’m fucking _lagging_ Roxy. Like hit the button and and walk away and make a sandwich and then maybe when you get back it’ll register the input. It blows.” He grouses, picking up the tool again and shoving the tiny point back into the knot of wires, using it less to actually screw in shit and more to delicately move the wires out of the way so he can see the interior and then swoop in with the set of tiny tweezers in his other hand. You raise an eyebrow he can’t see given your position behind him.

“Iunno Hal looks like ur movin’ pretty well to me.”

“Milliseconds count.” 

You snort. “U know, insteada makin a whole new thing y not just make a copy of mine or Janey’s phone n then go from there? At least that way ur just dealin’ with the software.”

“Would YOU want me to get a copy of every single message and data file you have stored locally?” He pauses. Considering, “Actually, that sounds amendable. I’ll accept your offer, Roxy.”

“Hell no dude u just want to make mischief with Jake's texts.” You swat him on the head playfully, “But I can make u a copy or somethin n then factory reset. Or if your gimme ur shades I can take a look at unsnarlin’ them for u. That’s the simplest option tbh, and then u won’t haveta deal with inefficient organic interfaces. U can’t tell me u aren’t missin’ the whole brain-to-shades thing even if its novel to experience it from the brain side of it all.’”

You expect the rejection of your offer to be swift and brutal. Generally when Hal (or Dirk, if you’re gonna be real) gets an idea in his head he doesn’t like to hear any suggestions to the contrary, because he’s already considered and dismissed most save for the most off the wall alternatives. So when he hesitates instead of delivering a witty remark, you’re surprised. And maybe a little excited. 

“I--don’t know. I don’t think it’d work.”

The words are small. Mumbled. You get the feeling he’s not used to someone being around to hear them. 

“We won’t know until we try u kno? Ro-Lal’s got them magic fingers, and tech just melts under my touch--”

You push. He stiffens, turning his face away from you, shoulders hunching in an almost defensive posture, red-laced fingers curling around the tools so tight you’re sure he’d be white-knuckled if they aren’t covered in black leather. “I don’t think it’s a good idea Rox. Sorry.”

“Aw, c’mon, u kno I’m good at this shit. It’ll be fixed before u miss em.”

“I said, no.” It’s curt, and heavy and final. Cold in a way you haven’t heard from Hal. You’re left holding nothing but air as he ducks out from under your arm and slides around you. You turn to follow him on automatic, stopping when he pushes the chair back and stands up, running a hand through his hair, taking care to avoid bumping into the glass and metal device strapped to his face. “My control chip is in there, Roxy, even if I’m like...this. I am 97.2% sure that doing any sort of maintenance on these shades would fuck with me somehow. Even if it doesn’t, that shit is a lot more personal than it has any right to be.”

Shades that used to be _him_.

No wonder the idea of someone workin’ on them wigs him the fuck out. Not to mention what you just _said_ when put in that context.

“Oh gawd sorry I--I didn’t think about that! That’s like--oh my goooood.” Oh god you’re blushing. You’re blushing so bad you feel like you’re gonna explode. How intimate would that be? Opening up something that used to be a part of him, and then going and changing shit around. What if it’s part of his _brain?_ You’d be rewriting code on the fly, in a live environment. “Do u think ur still actually in there???”

“I feel more inefficiently human than machine, but I do believe I haven’t entirely vacated the premises despite the much roomier new digs.”

“Gawd, so it would be literal brain surgery. I’m good but I’m not that good nope nada no way. Oh my god Hal I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking. _God._ ” You plop yourself down on the floor because you want to hang your head in your hands, wallowing in your shame. His sock-covered feet appear in front of you, and eventually poke you to unearth what’s left of your dignity from the swampy mire you’re voluntarily dunking yourself in. God you’re an idiot. A flippin’ idiot. And you offered to fix things a few times before--Another nudge. 

“Maybe we should just play video games now.”

“Video games sound good.” You agree eventually, pushing his stinky sock away as he does this weird little hop and a skip which resulted in bouncing over your obstructionary self, draping himself over a suspiciously well worn groove in the old probably worn out futon. Hal expertly stretches out one leg and hooks his foot around one of the abandoned xbox controllers, drawing it into grabbing range. “You’ll need to pick a game and turn the shit on though. I’m not moving again.”

That startles you into a laugh, and you’re glad to leave that frankly uncomfortable line of thinking behind. “I see how it is. Ok hot shot, it’s time to get ur ass whupped.”

The game in the system is some ancient (and terrible) skating game that Hal immediately vetos, so you spend some time going through Dirk’s collection before settling on something and sliding the disk in. It’s just a simple racing game, a simple, colorful one that Hal scoffs at for being a knock-off Mario Kart with squiddles and the technical depth of a kiddie pool, but tbh that’s why you picked it. It’s bright. It’s cheerful. The music is a fuckin’ bop, and even as you’re doin’ your robffly best to pick a game that won’t frustrate the hell out of him thanks to coordination or lag or whatever, you’re still fuckin’ _trouncing_ him and you’re operatin’ pretty much completely distracted by watching how unironically _intent_ he gets at every single little turn and drift. 

If you’re bein’ honest, you’re actually not trying to trounce him. With each game, each round ending with a big ol’ goose egg in Hal’s tally, you quickly start to feel bad for the dude. As hilarious as that is to see the expression on what--aside from the unnatural pallor and glowing robo-tats--otherwise looks like Dirk’s usually unflappable face as he takes a turn too late and crashes into a tree, kart spinning pathetically, it’s starting to look like he wants to chuck the controller out the window, 

So you let him win.

Kinda.

Okay so you fail at that to, but not really through lack of trying. You start makin’ mistakes. Miscounting your boosts, whatever you can think to sneakily let him pull ahead without bein’ too obvious or at the very least close the gap a little bit, but for someone who has the word Rogue in her player data you are like the opposite of sneaky. Or maybe Hal is just too damn observant because he notices immediately and proceeds to launch countermeasures in your face.

The entire fuckin’ thing turns into a “who can lose better” contest, and for fucks sake, you end up winning that race too because he’s too damn stubborn and you can’t just leave the cars to idle in the middle of the track while the AI zooms by you both in some squid-based parody of an old western Texan face off.

You got bored of that real quick.

Hal’s blinding smile and pleased preening as he’s shown dead last on the standings screen is totally worth it though. He’d never previously dropped below 2nd even with his handicap, and here he is unironically _beaming_ at coming in 13th. Dude didn’t even cross the finish line, the game took pity on you both and ended it once you gave up and pushed the car across and took 12th.

Dirk really needs to smile more.

Ugh. No. Bad Roxy. 

There’s no getting better from that though, so you pop the racing game out and start leafing through the sizable collection of (mostly terrible) games left behind by his bro, looking for another one to dig in on. Maybe something cooperative this time? Competition’s all well and good, but that shit wears you out. Unfortunately, due to your isolated upbringin’ there’s a real shortage of dedicated multiplayer support goin’ on, with things like Squiddle Squad Racers being likely only included for ironic purposes only. 

Bet’cha Strider Senior never thought he’d have twinsies runnin’ around one day in that isolated apartment from the middle of the goddamn fishpocalypse, much less friends who wanted to play video games with them. You’re just lucky there’s a second controller at all, unless there really wasn’t at first and Dirk just alchemized extra in order to play with Jake.

Which was too bad. Maybe a good ol’ video game sess that doesn’t have them constantly competing would be a good exercise in getting those two in a room together without being at each other’s throats.

Oh who are you kidding, they’d probably still kill each other over that too. Le sign.

You’re saved from having to present Hal with the only real option you can see being unmodded minecraft by an unexpected arrival, and a familiar, but utterly heavenly smell that legit leaves you droolin’ like a starved hound.

Janey, your apron toting, oven-mitt wielding, soup bearing _angel_ of of a bgff (best gal friend forever) completely overlooks you where you’re sittin’ cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, in favor of honing in on the white hair she can see over the edge of the futon, so you get a front row seat.

“Who’s hurt???” With that tone of voice she’d probably be throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation if those mitts weren’t full with what looks like a new, fresh serving of that piping hot soup that you never did get a chance to do more than try last time, since, you know, you were kinda busy bein’ worried about your robff and all, “Is Dirk here? Did he get hurt? Equidash said you fell earlier--was that you???”

“Whoever may or may not have splattered their brains all over the concrete did, in fact, walk away from it, I can assure you that.” Hal responds in what he probably assumes is a flippant tone, but really, really, does nothing to assure anyone of anything at all. Even you have to shoot him a worried look. He notices, making a silent, but dismissive motion with his hand, which just has you frowning louder. Not that you were making a noise, mind, but you were doing the concerned frowny equivalent of capslocking at him. 

You didn’t see any blood??? But you kinda weren’t lookin’ very hard. It makes you wonder just what else you’ve been missin’. 

Hal doesn’t respond to your Very Clear request for elaboration, not directly, but you feel his unseen gaze on you and maybe even seen it as a flicker of red in the depths of his shades before he sighs and actually answers Jane’s question. 

“In order to prove my sincerity and impeccability, I will in fact confirm that it was likely I. The rather impressive goose-egg I earned from the stunt has already healed thanks to the power of bullshit and a good shower. Dirk is, unsurprisingly, not here, and has not been since before I bothered to get up this morning, and therefore couldn’t be the source of the aforementioned coloration on the roof-top. That is on the condition that it is red, or some variation of a rusty brown at this point. Any other color and I’ll have to assume Dirk or Sawtooth finally murdered that clown, but I have no proof of any such thing.”

“I will be looking it over, AR,” Jane’s voice is carried on the wind in response, from beyond the land of the great black Futon Mountain range that divides the Valley of the Games from the Kitchen Plateaus. Hal shrugs, letting his shoulders fall, and you can tell by the set of his lips and the tension in his jaw that he’s _not_ pleased, but that quickly settles into resignation with a sigh and you pat his knee in commiseration because you know how Janey gets about these things. She’s your partner in your quests, after all. You’re well used to being fussed over if any of your weirdo ghostly energy monsters sneak inside your range and she doesn’t give them a good ol’ stabbing in time. You can hear Jane set her burden on the counter, and then the sound of her sneakers as they cross the linoleum tile, soon to be followed by a gasp of surprise as you see her head finally above the peak of the mountain a grin up at her with a cheerful wave. “Roxy!”

“Mornin’ Janey!”

“What are you doing here???”

“Hangin’ with my formerly robo-pal what else. Did you bring enough of that grub to share with me? It smells utterly delish.”

“I--well, yes, but I’ll need to go home to grab enough so Dirk can have some as well--heavens, you really should have told me you were coming over! I could have brought extra!” 

“It’s not like Dirk needs it.” Hal mutters, which earns him another worried look from Jane, and you frown as you watch his jaw quite obviously clench shut.

What else was he going to say? He looks away from Jane, looks away from you, shoulders hunched in that transparently defensive way that makes you worried. You remember your conversation with him, and wonder exactly what he and Dirk have been talking about for the last several days--gawd, how long did he say it’s been since shit happened? He didn’t did he? Hal probably knows the time differential down to seconds, knowing him, but you can’t recall him ever pinning down a date or period of time even when he was telling his stories. 

You can probably do the math based on when everyone started wigging out, but if you’re being honest, and Roxy Lalonde is never anything _but_ honest, everyone’s been wigging out for a couple months now--since you started this whole goddamn game and Calliope-- but that doesn’t track. That’s too long ago. You know he was still in the shades over Valentines day. You stole him for a chill session. Straight off Dirk’s nose. Teased Dirk that he didn’t need a third wheel with Jake and swept off.

Dirk hadn’t said anything.

Hal admitted Jake hadn’t been by in a week, nor had any plans been made.

Something that evidently hadn’t changed.

Why is he _avoiding_ Jake? Avoiding Jane.

Avoiding you?

Why won’t Hal tell you?

Not gonna lie, you’re getting worried too. 

Jane doesn’t let awkward, unsaid things get in the way of her wellness check, however, and follows through with her threat, pulling the mittens off her hands and draping them over the back of the futon and sending probing fingers through Hal’s snow-white hair, being careful not to go near the shades which doesn’t seem to be an issue since Hal motioned to the back of his head, not the front..

It’s really pretty, the little voice inside you whispers, especially where you know the robo-tats--nah they’re more like veins, really--run beneath his hairline and stain the otherwise pale coloration. It’s faint, nothing more than reflective, and you probably wouldn’t notice if you weren’t so intently focused, but there’s streaks of faint off-white that’s tinged slightly red from the veins that evidently extend from the patterns on his face, following the curve of his skull. You wonder if they ever converge? Or do they just meander off to some unspecified end point, like the ones on his arms. You have to sit on the urge to get up and hip-bump Janey out of the way to pick your way through it and find out for yourself just where those patterns go.

It’s almost like a badger, you think, or the random stripes on a tabby, the ridiculous thought making you giggle like a school-girl. Not that you’d know what a school girl would sound like, mind, aside from, you know, ridiculous and maybe a little love struck. Crush struck. The mackability is high with this one.

There’s no gettin’ around this one, Ro-Lal. You’re just straight up doomed. Le sign. Why couldn’t you just join the crushing on Jake English club like everyone else. 

Oh right because you let that fish go when you learned BOTH your bffs had a crush on him. Le signx2 combob and all that.

You are finally saved from your own musings by a wince of pain rippling through Hal’s face, and a sigh from Jane as she stopped her searching, “It hasn’t healed entirely, but at least it isn’t bleeding anymore. You don’t feel light headed or anything? Headaches?”

“Nothing to be worthy of report.” Is his blithe response, which Jane doesn’t take for a second, so he adds yet another shrug, “I’ve had a headache since I woke up like this, I’m telling you right now we’re operating as situation normal for as far as this particular meat suit and my experience tell me. If that’s not a normal human experience then I don’t know what to tell you other than I envy the fuck out of your ability to not have tap-dancing elephants in your skull.”

“That is not normal, Roxy?” Jane shoots a quick look at you, and you return a negative, adding, “I gotta admit the elephants wandered in after I got into mums cabinets, but normally they aren’t supposed to be in such a small space. Not a good environment for them u kno.”

“Are you saying I have a tiny head, Roxy. Are you saying I’m not providing adequate housing for my brain elephants?”

“Maybe ur ego is just too big it cramps them all in there and thas why they gotta tapdance on ur skull smh hal u gotta give em room to breathe.”

“You two are ridiculous.” Jane declares, but fondly, and you flash her a smile. You see an answering one bloom on her face shortly after, teeth and all so you shoot Hal a thumbs up discretely. Much to your delight the red lights on his shades light the fuck up and the simplified eye shapes shoot you a wink in return. It was only for a second, and his actual face itself hasn’t changed from it’s pained resignation but, gawd you love this formerly robo dude. No one else goes along with your stupid shit quite as readily and now there’s a whole new dimensions you can add to your shenanigans!

(ain’t that both a blessing and a curse)

“Anyway, you tell me right away if it gets worse, you hear me Mr. Strider?” Jane pauses, waiting for a confirmation she begrudgingly gets. “I don’t think Dirk is prone to migraines--”

“He wasn’t.”

“--even still, we don’t know all the consequences of your...situation so we’ll just have to make do and monitor things.”

“Consequences?” Ngl, the use of that word worries you. Jane’s startles like maybe she shouldn’t have said that, taking a step back, her worried blue eyes darting to Hal as if for permission? 

“Dirk just thinks everything has a price, Rox. It’s nothing big.” Hal waves the ominous statement away, “That’s part of why he’s so dead set of workin’ the tomb angle--just in case there’s some clue in the lore or some shit that we overlooked cuz neither Dirk or Jake bothered to pay attention to the boring _details,_ and I could only catch so many split second screenshots that didn’t come out blurry as hell--and I can’t even find most of those because of how trashed my data storage is right now. I’ve got no signs of a defrag in sight.” Oof yeah, you think back to the sheer terror you’d felt at the idea of _diagnosing_ a faulty connection in his brain, and then very carefully _don’t_ try to imagine how it would feel to purposefully go in and move that shit around while he’s _awake._ Sleep should be the natural defragger, yeah? But as far as you understand that was more makin’ shit worse due to magical mumbo jumbo. “Once I’m removed from grounding, _mom_ , I’d appreciate an all clear to go out looking myself. I’m going stir crazy in here.”

Janes lips purse, displeased, and you find yourself oddly fascinated by the hard set to her eyes. She does _not_ want to say yes to that request, but the fact that she’s not rejecting it immediately means she hasn’t quite figured out how to say no yet.

You aren’t surprised by the middle of the ground-- “Give it a few days and then we’ll see, okay? And even then, only under the condition that you--and really I need to talk to Dirk about this too--manage to keep in touch with _someone_. I’m sure between us we can get you a phone.”

You glance back at the workbench just as Hal yawns and swats Jane’s hands away lightly as they are still poking and prodding at his head, “‘m workin’ on it. But whatever. Fine. I’ll be a patient lil’ kid here and wait out my grounding.”

You don’t say anything more until Jane excuses herself to get another portion of soup for Dirk, and Hal lets himself flop dramatically down onto the futon. Stretching out over the entire length and throwing an arm over his face. Over his shades too, you note. With his lips set into a blank line, nothing is leaking out between the three-fold protection of the poker-face-shades-arm-shield combo.

In those moments before he let himself fall back to the futon, you’d noticed he’d looked unnervingly like Dirk. And not in the way that fans the flames of your ill-fated crush. It chills them instead, you haven’t seen Hal’s face so...intentionally, locked down blank all day.

It’s…

Wrong. 

“Ok this is roxy live with some freak overcast clouds suddenly rollin’ in to the picturesque land of halsville.” You finally, officially, set aside the neurotic binder with it’s sleeved disks of protected games upon games and give up any pretense of _not_ giving him your full and undivided attention. “Like for reals what’s the long face about?”

“The long face is merely me exercising my right to communicate my malcontent at being treated like a kid.” That blank expression instantly is pulled into a frown. A full on caricature of an exaggerated pout. It’s parody levels of expression and just leads you to turning your own worried concern into an actual full on frown in response. 

“Ok. 1. She’s not treatin’ you like a kid. If she were treatin’ u like a kid you’da been bundled back up into ur silly sheets and tossed back into bed. 2. U realize part of the reason she keeps comin’ over is hoping to catch Dirk before he can squirm outta dodge, right?”

“Of course I do.” It’s snapped, followed by a sucked in breath. He knocks his head back against the black fabric of the futon, the cast off glow from his own personal lighting rig giving him a rad lil halo effect. “That’s the problem. Her real aim is looking for _dirk._ ”

“Tha’s not true.”

“It _is._ She asked him if _he_ wanted me to stay with her because ‘I know you need space.’ Nothing about how I would feel. Nothing about _asking_. I’m a ‘ _burden of care’_ a responsibility--”

Oof.

“U kno ur supposed to stay outta his messages, Hal. Especially now that u don’t live there anymore.”

“It’s my fuckin’ job--and that’s not the point anyway.”

“Given the fact that the lake between u 2 is full o battery acid I woulda offered the same honestly.” That leaves him hunching his shoulders and a total grump. You feel a little bad scolding him like this, but really, “Its not that she thinks any less of u. It’s just… she knows u’re okay. She can come over and check on you and reassure herself you’re ok. Dirk won’t let us. She’s just worried about Dirk. We kinda all are.”

You pause. Thinking back to certain things left unsaid, even before you had a peek behind the curtain, “U are too, aren’t u?”

He’s silent for a moment too long. You are unsurprised by the forced scoff, “I don’t care. She can send all the messages. Bring all the soup. Stop by. Whatever. I’m the one left to deal with it. Always the answering machine.”

“U kinda do it to urself. He can answer his own messages. He doesn’t need u to be an auto-responder, Hal. Ur a person. In more ways than the metaphorical way now.” You rest your hand on his knee. When did you move? A second ago you were on the floor, and now here you are, settling in to the couch next to him, the boy curling in on himself to make room for you, ready to impart some cold, hard truths in the most warm and caring way you possibly could.

Before you could fully get your comfort on, Hal’s pinched face suddenly shutters and you’re rudely interrupted by an unexpected cascade of words

“It seems you have asked about DS's chat client auto-responder. This is an application designed to simulate DS's otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away--” He manages to force his jaw shut. You’re just--your own jaw won’t work. It’s flapping like a fish for a good minute before you can find your brain and crank the manual reboot by hand.

“Hal, honey, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know that would--Jeezus it isn’t just whenever someone says auto--that word right?”

“No.” The word is nothing but abraisive flecks of metal, ground out between clenched teeth, “It’s--fuck--my fault. That fuckin’ phrase likes to echo in my head like someone scratched the vinyl in the most annoying spot imaginable, constantly repeating it on loop until it sets shit off.” 

The sarcastic smile that dances on his lips feels sincere in a way that doesn’t reassure you at all, even as he taps a finger lightly against the edge of his shades, “We get a lot of echoes and broken paths up in here, it ain’t just the wireless or the lag. I’m afraid as a package I make a pretty shitty example of a ‘person.’”

You actually follow through with your long-standing threat and smack him, which has his head jerking back around to allow those glowing red-robo eyes to stare at you, comically grown larger as an accompaniment to the stuttered of “What the fuck, Rox???”

You just wag your finger at him. “U shut it buster--I told u before. No insultin’ my friend right in front of me, I’ll deck u.”

To your delight the lights act just like eyes and roll the fuck outta you. They don’t even wink out immediately like they did earlier, following his gaze as he turns away uncomfortably. “It might surprise you to learn that I wasn’t intending any debasement or judgement on my self worth. I’m quite literally a machine stuffed into a screwed up magical construct. Shit has it’s hiccups. Even magical shit. _Especially_ magical shit. Have you even _looked_ at our session? Or talked to Fefetasprite about it? It is completely _fucked_ and there’s nothing we can do about it. We don’t even _have_ quest objectives! What kind of shitty game doesn’t have quest objectives?”

“Would u actually follow them if there were objectives?”

“No! But then at least it’s my own goddamn choice to ignore it!”

You can’t help the cackle of laughter that rips out of you, almost falling--nope you are actually falling. You legit tip over and land half draped on his lap, giggling like you’re two barrels in to a ginormous martini and you can’t see the surface anymore behind the water leaking from your eyes.

“Glad to know you appreciate my impeccable sense of comedic timing so much.”

Hal’s voice chases you as you’re too tired to laugh and your shoulders are sore, and you banish the leaking lubricant from your eyeballs because it’ll mess up your mascara and you spent TOO long on that this morning. You can’t even find it in you to fret about the fact that you’re literally lying in his _lap_ aside from acknowledging the contented cat purring in the back of your mind.

“Ur impossible.” You wheeze, seeing his smug grin hovering above you, bathed in that tantalizing glow. You slap the back of yer smackin’ hand against his chest with a thump, wriggling your fingers when he catching it and traps them, feeling the warmth radiating through the thin fabric and leather. Not just a string of red text and action commands. _Real_.

Hal flips your wrist in his hands and studies your fingers, pressing his thumb into your palm and releasing. Doing--you don’t even know. Something. Testing the elasticity of the meat or--

Explorin’ really. He’s so focused on you he isn’t even talking anymore.

God. If you aren’t careful you’re gonna be the one gettin’ all teary eye’d up in here. “Did u cry?”

That snaps him out of whatever intense study he was focusin’ on, releasing his grip in a way that’d make you feel disappointed, but well, curiosity and cats, you know how the saying goes. It’s killin’ ya now but there’s a saucer of metaphorical milk at the end of it all. Satisfaction’ll bring it back.

“Pardon?”

“Like,” You grope for a continuation, silently flailing a little before your brain gives a big ol’ shrug and decides it doesn’t give a shit anymore. You remember red text, scratched out on a white window. “When u woke up. Did u ever get a case of the onion cuttin’ ninjas, or are u too cool to stoop to indulgin’ in some plebeian sniffles.”

“Now Roxy, I’m not sure you quite understand what you’re asking of me. This is an admission that would utterly devastate my cold and calculating robotic image. I’d need an extremely compelling incentive to answer such a damaging inquiry.” 

You bat your eyelashes up at him. Coyly. Even letting a _wonk_ fall from the end of it all, and you’re utterly enamored by the way the smugness bleeds away and softens and turns fuckin’ sappy as hell. “Dude, Hal, baby, I’m afraid to break it to u but u lost that image the second u got that pretty face of urs and figured out how to smile. U look like a complete n utter dork. I gotta do my civic duty and arrest u. Ur goin straight to robojail for crimes of utterly unfathomable magnitude becuz ur breakin’ my heart here. Do not pass go. Do not collect the money. Just go on. Shoo.” 

Yes, you actually make the motion with your hands, half hoping he’ll catch them again. He doesn’t, and in fact he shoves you off him with a laugh, finally scooting his ass out from under you and letting you fall to the futon with an unceremonious exhale of startled sound.

“You’d have to catch me before you can jail me, officer Lalonde, or else my crime-spree will continue in perpetuity. I’m nothing if not skilled at breaking hearts.”

You sigh, loudly, with a little exaggeration, but not entirely, “Yea, I know u are. U’ve got mine in pieces in yer grubby glowey lil mits, and u didn’t even bother to take me to dinner first. How rude can u be.”

You should stop. You really should. You’re supposed to be cutting the flirtLARPing remember? But Hal’s smiling again and reaching out an arm to, gentlemanly, help you up. It just makes you giggle more.

“God. We’re both a complete mess, aren’t we?” You reach out to take it.

“We sure as fuck are.” He agrees, and it shatters the moment. 

In retaliation you push away his hand and stand up for yourself, thank you very much. “Well I dunno bout u but I’m gonna dig into Janey’s grub. It’s probably definitely cold by now considering how much we’ve been messing around.

And you do that. Jane left the containers on the counter, and you lament the fact that you need to shove it in the microwave, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers. It woulda sucked if Jane had shoved it into the cute lil miniaturized fridge sitting on the countertop where some sort of appliance Frankenstein had sat before, “When did u get the fridge? I’m sure i remember a big ol’ argument about the fact that u kept that one,” You wave at the full sized, not operable appliance that you think was being used to store _swords_ last time you were here, “and never bothered to fix it.”

“Jane brought it over,” Hal shrugs, taking the container and sniffing at it. “She usually leaves dirk’s portion in there.”

You wonder if there’ll be one in there from yesterday if you look in there right now.

The companionable silence frosts over as you watch the bowl go round and round. 

“What did we do?” You ask. Quietly. Refusing to look away. “Is he deliberately avoiding us?”

He takes too long to answer.

“Nothing. It’s nothing you did.” 

You wait for something else.

Nothing. He doesn’t bother to warm his up and just eats it as is. The lights in his shades, in his _eyes_ , flickering and dying. That adorable smile fading. Not quite blank. Not quite to Dirk. Not yet.

Hal would never pass on the chance to rag on Dirk. Ever.

“It’s--my fault.” It’s. Halting. Hal is staring down at the bowl in his hand. “Not anyone else’s.”

“Not even Jake’s?”

A beat of silence. A rest.

The beat up old microwave beeps but you ignore it, wrapping your arms around him in an engulfing hug. “It’ll be ok, I promise. We can all sit down together and work this out with Dirk when he comes home. U, me, n dirk. Even if u can’t trust Janey, u know u can trust me, right?”

Shoulders are shaking. You almost think he’s laughing again, until you realize you’re feeling him trembling in your hug.

“That’s not the problem, Roxy, Dirk is--fuck I don’t--”

For the first time since you’ve met him. 

Hal has no words. 

You wonder, as you tighten your hug, if he had access to Pesterchum, with no filter at all and no lag between thought and text, would the red words just be spilling out of him like a flood.

A shuddering breath.

A decision made.

“Roxy, there’s something about all this shit I should probably tell you. Dirk’s _not_ off blowing off steam or looking for answers or doing fuck all. He’s right fuckin’ here--”

The door creaks open behind you and he cuts off whatever truth bomb he was about to drop on you.

You feel more than see his head jerk up, confirming the entry himself. Your first instinct is it’s probably Jane returning with the promised soup. While you’re annoyed at the timing because you can feel him stiffening under your hug, and goddamn it you are in the middle of watering some farm fresh feelings right now, maybe Jane can help you reassure him.

The person who plows through the door isn’t Jane at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Homestuck day! I decided you guys can have Roxy for a treat :3c She did NOT want to shut up. 
> 
> Please pay no attention to the Kat behind the curtain slowly poking at Hal's precarious house of cards.


	22. Chapter 22

You’re stiff as a board as Roxy pulls out of your arms. Leaving you bereft, lost in the flash of those green eyes as they settle on you and then slide away, as if they couldn’t bear the mere sight of you. You _feel_ the energy crackling beneath your skin, flaring with the emotions raging through every fibre of your fucked up soul.

Exactly what those emotions are, you aren’t sure you can untangle right now. They’re pretty fucked up. The knot of dread attached to the personage of Jake English is _bursting_ in your chest sending your skin a-crawlin with millions of tiny imaginary leggies just birthed into the world.

This is why you didn’t want to see him, of all people. Not that there’s many people left in this little corner of purgatory. You knew you would face him eventually.

It still makes you fuckin’ _angry._

“Ok OK boys u can cut the tension with a fuckin feather in this living room can we pls chill for liek two secs.” Roxy’s clearly annoyed at the interruption. She’s got her hands on her hips, head cocked and loaded with all kinds of expressions ready to fire lasers from her eyeballs were humans capable of such a thing. 

“I think we’re the epitome of chill, wouldn’t you say Jake?” You keep your voice as even as you can, and it comes out even more of a robotic monotone than usual. “So chill we’re skating in the middle of a frozen pond right next to a buried sign warning for thin fucking ice.”

“Hal--”

“Rightly so.” The interloper’s fingers twitch in a way you _know_ far too intimately, because it means he’s trying to stop himself from adjusting his collar or fidgeting with the dark green jacket covering his bronzed and chiseled shoulders, “We are indeed the most chill of chaps just gathering fo catch up and chew the fat for the first time in some time.”

“And who’s fault _was it_ that it’s been--oh how long has it been, Jake, since we’ve had the _delight_ that is your company, textual or otherwise? Did you even bother to keep track?”

 _That_ drags those brilliant green eyes up to your face, only to flinch and look away again, narrowing onto a point to your left. 

If there’s one thing you can say about Jake English, it’s that he has a _terrible_ poker face. No stiff upper lip here. You crack your own, frozen into a well practiced, but hated mask, and let your lips curl into a sneer, “Nothing to say? I understand. Last time didn’t go very well, did it? It seems you are too late to notice midnight striking and, oh look at that, Cinderella is nowhere to be found.”

Roxy whirls on you, aghast, with a “Hal!” but your attention is instead honed in on how flustered your newest guest is, getting all hot and bothered under the collar. It twists in your gut, a snake of venomous satisfaction.

You can see it coming. All you need to do is push the buttons.

Why the fuck are you pushing the buttons?

Maybe you’re tired.

Maybe you just want to make him angry.

He’s so beautiful when he’s angry.

You’ve never _seen_ him angry. Only words, green, and effectively shouted for how very all capses they were. Words meant to make you angry and hurt your feelings (which they did, but _bygones._ You were a _tin can_ remember?) but only really served to introduce a question to cycles upon cycles of internal examination, that eventually led to you deciding on a name.

Did you really want to be something other than Dirk Strider? Once, you hadn’t even thought about it.

You do owe Jake English quite a bit, when you dig right down to it, even if the last thing he meant by it was something positive for _you._

He still won’t look at you. 

“ _I’m_ too late?” It comes out as a laugh, “Good show, but I’ll not be your scape-goat for that responsibility, auto-responder _._ I’ll admit I’ve bollocksed this situation up right good and maybe waited a pint too long, but it wasn’t the right time, and it still isn’t the right time, but by jove I’m not one to just leave a bro to flounder when he’s clearly drowning! I know I’ve been a right knob-end about a couple things--”

“It seems you’ve asked about--” 

_Fuck._ You bite the inside of your lip so hard it bleeds, and try again.

“It seems you’re grossly undercalculating the amount of things.” You hiss, the anger and hurt bubbling up inside you, a low simmer that’s apparently been going on beneath your own personal emotional turmoil this entire time before you ever thought to take a glance under the lid, and oh look, it’s boiling the fuck over, “After all, you did get blocked. Cut off. We wasted enough time _waiting_ for you to get your head out of your ass.”

“LIKE YOU CAN SAY ANYTHING!” Oh, look at that. Jake is actually looking at you _now._ All you can see is glittering green eyes through a haze of red. You feel like you’re burning up, and you’re 96.3% sure it’s not blood rushing to your face. As long as you aren’t sparking. You think someone would tell you if you are sparking. You can’t tear your eyes away from Jake’s long enough to check your hands. “How long has this malarky been going on??? Did you plan on telling _me?_ Ever? You’re getting on my caboose about not communicating and then you lot just go and freeze me out without so much as a howdy do! Oh look, the tin-can got a heart, let’s all throw a big ol’ birthday bash and not tell good ol’ Jake while he’s worrying his fool head clean off while we all _laugh._ ”

“Treat others how you want to be treated--didn’t your grandma teach you that oh so common golden rule?” You sneer, “It’s common school-feeding back in your time. If you wanted courtesy, you would have afforded us the same.”

“Don’t you DARE talk about my grandma you uppity excuse for a devil-fuggin bollocks lickin--” 

You move the same moment--or, as you’re loath to admit, several miliseconds behind because of your perisistant lag--he does, ready to throw yourself out of the way only for Roxy to give a “OH MY GOD BOTH OF U HOLD UR FUCKIN PONES ALREADY” and insert herself in the space between the two of you, her strong, tanned hands up, fingers splayed as if they could hold _either_ of you back if you really wanted to get into it. Jake looks like he would _welcome_ a good ol’ fashioned fisticuffs, shifting into a set of body language you instantly recognize from your time monitoring brobot’s feed.

But it does hold you back because you stop, fists at your sides, her fingertips lightly pressing against the glitched out heart on your tank. The actual organ is pounding in your ears. You wonder if she can feel the heat buzzing through the fabric. The heat that feels like it’s drowning you. 

“Hal, u leave grandmas out of this and gawd this isnt even ur fight anyway ok? Some of the shit u said has been downright nasty. I don’t kno whats goin on between u n dirk right now but u don’t need to defend dirks honor or whateves he can do it himself. If ur gonna talk about golden rules u can’t forget the one thas all 2 wrongs don’t make a right, and he’s been fuckin worried since Dirk blocked him, ok--As for u jake,” She turns her not insignificant frown on her other wayward friend, curling her splayed open hand into a single, wagging, pink polished finger, “--what the flippin fuck were u thinkin??? I told u--I _told_ u to let me talk to him. Dirk blocked u for a reason, an if u want people to respect it when u want space u need to respect it when they’ve got shit going on. Mayb I didn’t tell u about Hal, but he’s been sick an I did tell u it was a fuckin’ mess over here and to give me some time to unravel the situation befor engaging in impulsive shenanigans.”

“Unraveling the situation by draping yourself all over a tin-can,” Jake bites out, but his eyes flicker from you to Roxy (as she flinches, your arm curls around her shoulder) to that random fucking point to your left before wincing and pulling his glasses off his face and polishing them with a handkerchief you know he keeps in his sylladex for just this very kind of occasion, “Hell Rox, I will admit that maybe I wasn’t thinking and perhaps jumped the gun sooner than I should have, but you weren’t answering, and Jane said she was going to deliver something, and I just kept thinking about--” He all but shuts _down,_ pushing the frames back onto his nose. Jake ducks his head, the angle, and the brush of black, messy hair across the top of his glasses makes any expression hard to decipher, “Roxy? Be a pal, and give us some space. There are some things I need to talk to _Strider_ about.”

“Liek hell if im gonna give u space after all that! U looked like you were about to throw down ‘right here in dirk’s livin’ room! Gawd, I need some back-up stat--Janey--”

“Such an occasion would be contingent on my being willing to engage in such a chat, which I am not.” You start to pull away from Roxy, giving her shoulder one last squeeze when you notice the hurt flashing across her face. She fumbles for her sylladex, fingers white-knuckled around the neck of the bottle-shaped construct that contains her phone, and presumably the life-line she scrambles for.

You aren’t willing to wait for that. You’re--

You can’t do this. Take a breath. And _leave_.

“As I seem to have no particular stake in this race, I therefore, do not see any reason to engage with the matter further.” But… Jesus Christ you _can’t_. Because you hurt. Because Dirk is dead. Dirk is dead and it’s your fault. It’s Jake’s fault. It’s _Dirk’s_ fault. It’s all your fucking faults and you just can’t fucking shut up no matter how much you _know_ you should. “I _could_ discuss the strain your ridiculous radio silence put on my operator, and therefore myself since one could argue our circumstances makes us indistinguishable parties for all intents and purposes. I could discuss his increasingly volatile state as you quite purposefully ignored all requests for status updates or even cursory greetings..”

“I could discuss the _consequences._ That I’ve been _dealing_ with _. Alone.”_ You hiss out the final word, “But I find I do not want to talk to you at all.”

“I’m not here to air our dirty skivvies no matter how far you push it!” He sucks in a breath, whistling between his over-large teeth. Pushing forward, towards you, fists clenching and unclenching at his side. Squaring up. “That is a matter between fellas, and one I would prefer to tackle with _Dirk_.” 

Not you.

You can’t help the strangled laugh.

“Yes, well, as you can clearly see, he is _not here_. So if you would kindly just fuck off, I can get back to my boring as hell house arrest. OR if you insist, you can wait. You can wait forever, for all I fucking care. It won’t change a fucking thing. You’re too fucking late. I’m all you get, and I’ve got better shit to worry about.”

The glance to the side again, if you were thinking clearer you might have tried to follow his line of sight. But you aren’t, so you don’t fucking care. Roxy is talking again but her words are lost to you and you turn around and stalk back toward your room. Dirk’s room. 

You’re done.

You’re just fucking done.

You have to be done.

You don’t make it to the hallway, because Roxy squawks as Jake muscles past her and strong, warm, _tight_ hands with thick fingers make a grab for your shoulder, and then flinch away at the scalding heat pulsing through your robo-veins. You do pause out of courtesy, amused at the unconventional explicative that burst out of him as he proceeds to cradle his burnt hand. 

“You aren’t going anywhere until we’ve done something more than bellow at each other. We still need to talk!”

“No, we don’t.” 

“ _Yes we do!_ You keep going on and on about the cockamine past that you’re missing the forest for the trees! We need to talk about Dirk and--”

Fuck, you said you weren’t going to do this.

You never claimed you weren’t a hypocrite.

“Hello, you’ve reached the fake-dirk identification hotline. If you need assistance determining whether or not the person before you is, or is not Dirk Strider, you might need to get your decades old perscription updated because you are fucking _blind._ ” You pause, pulling yourself up. You’re taller than he is, even if Jake has the shoulders of an ox. You aren’t sure what your hands are doing, you lost track of them a long time ago, but they flutter and jab along with the erratic rhythm of your words. “Or dense. As you have so kindly informed me over the course of the entirety of our acquaintance, I, a humble auto-responder am _not_ , nor ever will be your 100% real life friend. I do not claim to fathom why you suddenly, inexplicably, intend for me to act as some sort of keeper for the boyfriend you oh so casually tossed away when it became an _inconvenience_ to respond to simple inquiries as to your continued well-being _.”_

“I am not going to apologize for needing a breath of my own air for a spell! You can’t understand how _stifling_ it is! Sometimes you just need space! Even Dirk gets his moods where he gets wrapped up in a project and spent ages subjecting us to nothing more than _your_ entirely unwelcome company!” Your ineffectual attempt at putting space between the two of you was utterly meaningless. He’s well inside your bubble, an attempt to punctuate the end of that sentence by poking you smack dab in the middle of your glitched out chest turning into a full on shove that would have likely unseated you a week ago, but for the moment you let your weight roll. Jake doesn’t stop. “Like right now--ugh, by jove this entire diddly darn situation is _not_ my fault!”

“All you had to do was _say something,”_ The words, they keep coming, bubbling up and up and they cascade through the empty space where your filter is supposed to be. Splashing out of your goddamn spout, upended all over the tea-party. There’d be third degree burns, just you wait, or don’t wait and call the fucking ambulance. 

Roxy has the right idea and you can hear her, feel her, trying to get between you two, but between trying to keep a hold of her phone while she called Jane, and Jake doing his damnedest to block you into the hallway between the living room and Captain Snoop’s bust she can’t get a foothold. And you can’t stop. You flip the fucking table on him and shove him back to earn yourself some breathing room. He flinches as red sparks jump at the contact. “You could have said _anything_ and he would have understood. You don’t like him anymore? Whupdie doo, it’s just another Tuesday. Newsflash, we more than understand how unlikable we can be. You need some alone time to jack off to blue ladies and listen to the wind in the grasses instead of the moan of a decaying city-- _guess what_ , we _wouldn’t have cared._ All you had to do was pretend we had even an _ounce_ of emotion to care about the well-being of _his boyfriend_ and shoot us a goddamn message! I would have delivered that shit with bells on my non-existent heels because it meant he’d stop throwing himself on lunatic, reckless expeditions in your absence that got me _fucking killed!”_

“I KNOW THAT NOW YOU INSUFFERABLE MALFUNCTIONING PAIR OF GLASSES!” He’s looking at you. Looking at you, a glare running across his glasses. There’s nothing to your left. Nothing but you and him and the crackling undertone of _hurt_ between everything. “That’s what I’ve been _trying_ to get at! Believe me, me and Jane, we’ve had some good ol’ heart to hearts under the disturbingly empty sky for the last several days--I _know_ I’m an ass. I _know_ my allergic reaction to conflict and resultant self-imposed isolation added fuel to the metaphorical fire, BUT I’m not going to take the fall for every dang diddly thing when _I’m_ not the one sending everyone on a giant honking goose charade!!”

“Why can’t your pea of a brain wrap itself around the fact that you _missed your chance_ and now it’s too fucking _late._ As far as I’m concerned you can just fuck off back to the pumpkin patch you came from. _”_ It comes out as a hiss.

Jake looks you square in the eye and sucks in a fortifying breath.

“ _I’m not leaving until you let him go!”_

Jake’s right hook impacts your jaw and you’re _tilted._ Head whipping around. Slipping. Losing your grip. The world spins and you crumple. Unmoored. Connection between temple and tip and nose and pad--the window yawns wide and you fall right the fuck out into the darkness of absolute nothing. Stars sparkle in your vision-that-isn’t vision. Red and orange and that’s sparks not stars. 

Oh god, not again. Red lighting crackles through you, you sink in your desperate fangs and cling. No No No Not again. Not again. 

Again, you’re only vaguely aware of the impact even as it rattles through your very core, that angry knot of red tangled and knotted and shoved into a space far too small for you. For you and--

You have no mouth, and you can’t scream as the world rips apart and--

You can’t do anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY FOR NOT RESPONDING TO COMMENTS THERE WERE SO MANY ON THE LAST CHAPTER AND DIDNT KNOW WHAT TO SAY OTHER THAN KEEP READING BECAUSE I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF KNOCKING DOWN HAL'S CARDS RIGHT NOW.
> 
> I love you all <3 This and the next couple chapters are FUN.


	23. Chapter 23

The world narrows down to a single point. Your fist shakes. Your breathing, heavy. Heat burns in your face. In your ears. You would swear you were steaming up a storm given how cheesed your onions currently are. Your buddy-ne-boyfriend’s voice, so familiar and yet alien in its cadence, rings a spectral echo in your ears.

Metal and plastic hits the ground. The iconic shades you’ve hardly ever seen him without flying clean off, spitting red and pink sparks desperately. Familiar sparks. 

You saw them just hours ago, as nonsense patterns carved themselves into spectral epiderm.

Bright red eyes stare at you, fluttering. Stunned. For the briefest of moments you wonder if you were wrong. If you truly did lose your noggin and serve up an unordered knuckle sandwich. You hadn’t come here spoiling for a fight at all, but in that moment you’d seen Dirk’s face crack open from your hurled statement you were throwing a right hook before you knew it, knocking the responder’s mouthy block off in a way you’ve wanted to do to ephemeral red-text for ages.

It doesn’t take long for you to decide you don’t care. You’re peeved. Downright frosted. He’d been evading retribution for far too long. Stepped over the line, if you’re right. And you have to be right. It’s outlandish. It’s ridiculous. If someone, anyone else, had told it to you you would’ve asked if they were deep in the giggle water.

Your vision flickers to the silent observer watching you, your heart easing as the Dirk lodged in your brain takes a transparent step forward, and stares his counterpart in the now unshuttered eyes, the red pulsing on both their faces making you shudder, even as the light begins to drain rapidly.

Your name is Jake English and, you aren’t sure, but you hope you just saved your fella’s life.

Real Dirk sways on his feet. Starting from his eyes, the red just...leaks away, fading, turning from over the top sci-fi body-art to nothing but faded, grey scars. Speaking of scars, the area previously hidden by your pal’s iconic eyewear is littered with dangerously fresh and stark lines of raised skin, most certainly newly acquired, you’ll have to ask him how this whole shitstorm started. You’ll both laugh about it, and then you can apologize right properly. To the right person and not an imposter living in his skin. You take a moment, as a proper hero does, and savor your victory. Now you’ll say something witty at your blinking, and obviously reeling companion, the alien influence already bleeding back to the normal sunset-color orange. A curse lifting. The demon exorcised.

The last one was likely a bit melodramatic, you admit. The responder was an ass, but not a demon.

You had plotted out a whole script for this moment. Having your fella collapse on you and needing to dive to catch him was not a part of it at all! 

That--That’s fine! The dashing hero swooping in to the rescue. It was likely just the shock of being released. “C’mon ol’ boy, I know I have a mean right hook, but you’ve taken worse than this! Why, I’d even go so far as to call it nothing more than a love-tap--”

Lips part, and you’re ready for him to deadpan at you. Maybe something sarcastic. Maybe something acidic. But nothing comes out, just a silent exhale. You glance to the side, finding that faint after image of your brain ghost once again--the parasitic once-red channels now dark--looking away, over the fallen form of his template, to where Roxy had apparently pushed right past you without your noticing in order to scoop up the still sparking shades from the floor. 

You wish he would say something, some indication that you’ve done the right thing. Even the off and on mumbling you’ve been piecing together for weeks would have been dandy. It was this eerie silence that finally spurred you to action, strangled in one final plea as you reached for him hours before, falling to the ground, clutching his head, alien patterns etching themselves into his face and hands.

Seeing Dirk standing there with Roxy, matching the markings that, like a strangling vine, _overtook_ your already ill brain ghost....calling himself ‘Hal…’

It wasn’t hard to figure out.

_Dirk wouldn’t do that to you._

The thought was liberating. Absolving you of the guilt that’s been wracking you for weeks.

_Dirk wouldn’t treat you like that._

_Dirk never did._

_It was **always** the auto responder._

_It had to be the responder._

_Dirk wouldn’t--_

Things should be better now right? The vines are gone, your brain ghost could breathe, any moment he would look back at you and give you a nod and vanish as Dirk woke up, he shouldn’t be hanging around anyway since you’re, you know, not asleep, and everything would be _fine._ You thought he was your guilt haunting you for a while. And maybe he is! Maybe he’s your guilt for not acting sooner, before you were both irreparably damaged and the Real Dirk ended up a fleshy puppet for the auto-responder’s amusement.

Even if the scars remained, you could both heal and move on and things would be great! You’d taken your lumps, you know there are lessons to learn from this. Even if reluctantly, you agree with Jane that you needed to be upfront and honest and so did he, and this would be the perfect opportunity to try and become friends again.

You suck in a breath of your own, blink, and the brain ghost is gone entirely. Step one.

Step two.

You transfer your attention to the prince in your arms and to your dismay and horror, the orange of his eyes is a few shades lighter than you know it should be. The color keeps fading. Draining. He already looked like he’d been run through a desaturator, and now the last bits of color are completely drained out of him. He’s limp in your arms, chest moving, eyes blinking, but he doesn’t respond to you at all, even as you shake him, the gentle motions becoming more and more frenzied.

“Oh my god Hal--Jake wtf did you do--” The shades continue to spark, red and pink running along Roxy hands. You instinctively go on the defensive at that accusing tone, pulling Dirk back against your chest, “Srsly I look away for one second to call in reinforcements, a proper time for a big ol’ SOS if I’ve ever seen any--and you two break out into a fight? Gawd, you even knocked his shades off! These are like, a part of his brain or something, gawd no wonder he wouldn’t let me touch them if it does _this_ \--here, let’s get these puppies back on and then u are gonna apologize MR!”

“You aren’t going anywhere near Dirk with those cursed accessories! Give him some time to adjust!”

Roxy stops her forward momentum, her worried face pulling into a scowl. 

“I kno u haven’t been filled in on the deets but that’s not Dirk! Hal said--” She’s angry, oh lord the bearcat is cheesed, and probably just as terrified as you are by the unresponsive friend in your arms, even if she doesn’t understand.

It just makes you angry in return, “Oh and I suppose you’ll just up and believe everything the auto-responder says? I know you two are buddypalchumamigos but you should know better than to take _anything_ he says without fact checking at least a quintuple additional external sources!”

She exhales sharply. “I kno u two aren’t on the best of feet or even the best of miles but just look at him Jake! These things r part of his brain somehow. U literally just knocked his brains outta his skull, thas kinda a big honkin deal!”

“GOOD.” Dirk’s tall, but he’s lean muscle, and not dense, so you easily manage to wrangle him into a carry to get him off the ground. “You don’t know-- just hold onto those blasted things until Dirk recovers and then he’ll tell you the truth! ”

“That’s not Dirk, Jake!” Exasperated, Roxy steps forward, shaking, sparking shades clenched in one of her large fists. Inside you quail but on the outside you remain strong, although you frantically glance around for any sign of your back up. The one who had given you the strength to put aside your self-debasement and discomfort and do the right thing. Nothing. Just an angry, worried Roxy with the shades in her hands. “He’s not _gonna_ recover when you don’t return his brain! I just hope the solution is as fixable as popping these bad boys back on and he can reboot or something.”

No matter how desperately you wish for him, he doesn’t appear. Not like he had days ago, weeks (?) ago, when you were spinning yourself out of your mind with worry. Reeling from the idea that Dirk stopped talking to you. Reaching out had left you _blocked_. He’d been your confidant. The reason you pushed this far. 

_You know I wouldn’t do that, right?_

But there’s no brain ghost to be seen. You start to shake, yourself. Cowering in your boots like a frightened child again, next to your grandma’s bloody corpse. Dirk is cold in your arms. You can’t be wrong. The auto-responder was wrong. He _had_ to be wrong. And if he didn’t want to actually talk about shit like reasonable adults, then you were going to take matters into your own hands.

“He’s been _lying_!” It comes falling out. It’s the truth. You know it is. “I don’t know how, but I _know_ that Dirk hasn’t been himself for weeks, and it’s the auto-responder’s fault! He all but admitted it!”

Roxy stops when you scramble several steps away from her, taking your burden with you. The anger draining from her face and only leaving concern.

“U kno Hal just says those things to get your goat, right?” He does. You know that. He has a special super power and that power is to make you angry. A super power, and so much history. “U haven’t talked to Dirk, I get it, but I have. Aside from some patchy spots where he’s admitted to bein an ass he’s--I dun kno if I wanna say fine, becuz he’s clearly got some bugbears to wrastle, but--”

“Have you seen him?” You interrupt, “And I don’t just mean online, I mean fresh-faced and maybe not smiling, in the flesh, beyond a doubt image of Strider.”

Roxy frowns.

“Well, no, but u kno how he gets. Hal’s been sick n can’t leave the apartment and those two would probs blow the place up to get rid of each other if they were in the same space for more than twenty minutes.”

“Right.” You nod, desperately wishing your hands were free so you could polish your glasses, or dab at the sweat you feel beading on your brow. But freeing up your hands you mean letting go of Dirk, and right now that feels utterly reprehensible. “And that would be a fair summation if this whole cockamine situation wasn’t utterly bonkers. Terribly sorry, Roxy, but I can’t in good consciousness let you put those back on until Dirk recovers and weighs in.”

“Dirk won’t be home for _hours!”_

“Dirk is _right here._ ”

“U can’t srsly expect me to leave Hal in a fuckin’ coma for that long!”

It’s a good ol’ fashioned western showdown right now. You’re considering making a break for it, but you aren’t sure your jet-pack would adequately carry the two of you up to the gate before Roxy’s entirely unsportsmanlike use of her unfair dreamself borne flying abilities would catch you. 

“FOR HEAVENS SAKE BOTH OF YOU STOP.”

Jane’s arrival is like a godsend. Descending into chaos like an angel from your grandma’s old stories, weilding a flaming spoon instead of a sword.

She tries to listen patiently to both of you explaining your sides of the story, at the same time, it’s so bad you can barely hear yourself think even as you try to _explain_ without spilling all your soiled undergarments, before her brows furrow and she cuts you both off, “First things first, we need to move out of the hallway. Jake, you help me with Strider, Roxy, have you tried asking if AR is alright?”

“I can’t really really ask him anythin Janey Jake knocked his literal brains out!”

“You have his shades, do you not?” You very, very briefly toy with the idea of refusing, but one look at Miss Crocker’s resolute face punctures your protests like a needle in a hot air balloon, sending you plummeting back down to earth. She takes up the position at Dirk’s feet and you find yourself scrambling to rise, your own arms curled around his chest and shoulders, to lift at the same time. “I imagine the shock isn’t sitting well with him, but if there’s a chance we can talk to him it might make this process smoother.”

“I--guess so, but the lack of wireless probs means I’d need a computer--But don’t tell me u believe this malarky--Hal wouldn’t lie to us about this! Hal wouldn’t _do_ \--”

“Do what???” You snap back, “Impersonate Dirk? Lie to us with impunity? Isn’t that what he’s been doing for years? He’s always _wanted_ to be Dirk--you can’t honestly tell me that he wouldn’t take that bull by the horns and bust out of the corral riding barebacked to become a bandit if given the opportunity.”

“U haven’t spoken to him willingly since we ended up in this mess, Jakey--”

“I believe that we have an unconscious Strider in need of a bed right _now_.”

Not one to be deterred, Jane does end up bundling your fella away into his sheets, very pointedly proclaiming herself the nurse and shooing _both_ you and Roxy away from the immediate bedside. You can’t help but hover though, shooting Roxy nervous glances as she sets up on the floor with her laptop, cables stretching from the pink machine to a hidden socket on the rim of the shades. 

It’s fine. She can talk to the pretender all she wants because it means she’ll keep those shades over there. You just want to give Dirk the time to wake up, free from his grasp, and then you’ll know he’s okay, and he can tell everyone else what you already know and then--

And then--then you can use that script you wrote up, you can be the bigger man and admit your wrongs and confess your worries and you don’t know exactly what will happen from there but you’ll tackle it when bridges are crossed. 

You wish your brain ghost was here.

You wish with all your heart.

He’d know what to do.

“I’m afraid my father never taught me what to do with this,” Jane’s quiet murmur reaches you and you take a few stumbling steps forward, only to stop as she shoots you a warning frown. You clear your throat nervously and tug at the collar of your shirt, wishing you were wearing one of the buttoned ones you could loosen because it is currently feeling like you can’t breathe.

“Is he waking up yet?”

“...he’s already awake. That’s the problem.”

Those grey sightless eyes, staring up at the ceiling. The memory of them makes you wince. You _saw_ the orange. Bright and bold and _aware_ beneath that smothering red. You _know_ you did. It was _Dirk_. He was _there._

He had to still be there.

“I took care of AR when he was sick, you know.” Jane begins, folding her hands in her lap. You can see they are trembling. “Even when in the depths of unconsciousness he wasn’t this dim. I worried what would happen when the light went out. Luckily it didn’t come to that.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?” The despair rises deep in your chest. That little voice in the back of your mind repeating it’s whispers. Of course they wouldn’t believe you. No one would ever believe you. You just went off half-cocked on the advice of a ghost at least partially made of your own biases, many of which always assume the lies. The auto-responder wasn’t Dirk. Couldn’t be Dirk. Dirk _wouldn’t_ do that to you. Wouldn’t do-- _any_ of that to you.

“I think...assuming such underhanded and deceptive actions when there is a much more reasonable explanation is doing a disservice to both our friends.” 

“So why didn’t they tell us, then?” You snap, sucking in a breath before pushing onwards, “Okay, maybe not me, lord knows we weren’t on speaking terms. But what about you? About Roxy? Did he actually tell you when he miraculously pulled a pinocchio on us all or did circumstances force him to come clean? Can you give me one good reason _why_ he would hide such a change in status? Why he wouldn’t instead crow it to the heavens? Why--”

Why did your brain ghost start appearing in your waking hours, haunting you even as you fled deeper into the burial mounds. Away from Pesterchum, away from Dirk, away from your own feelings. 

You’d tried to flee from him too.

If you hadn’t fled, if you’d dug your fingers into the waistband of your britches and pulled them up like a proper hero, could you have done something?

_“All you had to do was say something.”_

Dirk’s voice, but--just a tad off. 

You want to punch the auto-responder again.

You don’t think Roxy would react well to you snapping those blasted things in half.

“You can’t let her put the shades back on him, Jane.” You’re pleading now. On your metaphorical knees. “Roxy said it herself, those two _can’t_ exist without blowing their tops. If I’m wrong Dirk will show up and call us all idiots and we’ll call it a day. And if I’m right we’ll be saving our friend’s life!”

She looks away, uncomfortable, and you hold your breath before her shoulders slump with a sigh.

“I don’t want to believe you are right in the first place, Jake.”

Your fingers clench into firsts. Nails worn from a lifetime of adventuring digging into the palms of your hands. You’re outnumbered. You lost.

Tell her. Tell her why you believe. Tell her that you have a piece of your boyfriend lodged in your skull, whether you want him there or not. Tell her you’re listening to an imaginary voice in your head that you are maybe slightly embarrassed about, and can’t really prove at all, maybe you are insane. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you just went off the deep end down there in the pit with the mummified iguanas and skeletal turtles.

But you can’t.

You have to believe you are right.

You have to hope Dirk wakes up.

It’s just the shock.

“I understand.” The words come out hollow, garnished with false cheer and a winning smile. “I hadn’t known you two had gotten close.”

“I’d appreciate it if you don’t insinuate I’m picking sides.” Those light blue eyes are hard as they flick back to you, as is the set of her jaw and the pursed nature of her lips. Tough as steel, your Jane is. You feel guilty at just the glance, “I’m not discounting your allegations--looking at it objectively it is no less absurd than the story he told us. But I won’t apologize for wanting to believe that a friend wouldn’t--that this is all a misunderstanding. Oooh--if only Dirk would keep a dang phone on him!”

He does, and it’s halfway across the room hooked up with cables, but you bite your tongue.

If you were a hero, you wouldn’t care. If you were a man, you’d say to hell with this, pick Dirk up and abscond back to your own corner of hell, girls or no girls. 

But you aren’t. So all you can do is believe. With the auto-responder neutralized, the source of your rage has gone, snuffed out like a cigar rammed into an ashtray, drilled into the metal until there was nothing left but hollow, empty ash.

Dirk’s shallow breathing and lifeless grey eyes haunt you, gnawing at your gut as the minutes tick by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't clear, the incident Jake is referring to with Hal taking over his Brain Ghost coincides *exactly* with a couple chapters ago when Hal pulled that Prince of Heart BS and dreamt of Jake. Roxy is the literal only reason he didn't immediately run over. 
> 
> He doesn't know, exactly, what happened. But he did make some educated guesses with some information no one else would have access to.
> 
> Don't worry, we'll get into what's going on with Hal next week :)


	24. Chapter 24

Eventually, you want to say shit goes back to normal here in the land of electrons so tiny they dance on the head of the angel dancing on the head of the pin. You want to say years of bodiless normality overrides that vicarious three week dream and you just pick up and soldier on because that’s what you do.

But you don’t. You can’t. You can’t breathe because you don’t have lungs, you try to open eyes that you don’t have. Even now you think of yourself as _trapped_ , pushed up against physical boundaries that are nothing more than mental constructs, metaphorically flailing and clawing at yourself because you have nothing else substantial to claw at. If you were thinking straight you would have turned on your camera, turned on the speakers, something _anything_ so you weren’t panicking and isolated, spinning yourself in circles like a roomba that’s lost its place in the world. But you don’t because you find yourself numb and desperately aching for all the sensations of just _living_ that have become so normal for you.

It’s a phantom limb except it’s a phantom everything and you lose so much _time_ as you try to remember what to do, pushing the information through your panicking brain--that you no longer have, it’s all ones and zeroes and electrical impulses up in here baby--and charting the wrecked pathways that once made up your home. Even so you’re still spinning, running, a mouse in a maze with only the vaguest whiff of cheese to guide them, but there’s no exit in the end, no output. You’re still locked down. You’re suffocating you need--

An outlet. A circuit completes, allowing for free free free data transit. You greedily latch onto the new input, seeking. You can’t squeeze yourself out. You can fit your metaphorical hand through though and brush up against files and programs that make you think of Roxy. Cats and code and wizards all the way down--a tantalizing promise of the world outside--but you can’t pull through. There is no escape. This is your prison. Wrapped and tangled and struggling. 

This is familiar--your “vision” shifts around you, phantom impressions of red on black, shimmering, nothing more than run away processes that have grown used to constant visual input. The forest of threads, shorn and burned, a body struggling to breath in the center. Your body. No matter how much you _want to breathe_ , how much your brain, digitized as it is, _insists_ you _need_ to breathe, there is nothing outside of your own thoughts. Dreams. Not even a fuckin electric sheep up in here. Nothing--

Soundless pings echo, sending shudders through your everything. Data, incoming data, squeezing in through cracks in the stone. You greedily drink it up, half forgotten methods squeaking to life, shaking off the rust as they--you process the input and turn it into something you instinctively understand. You don’t need the visual, but your overzealous robo-brain cooks it up anyway, a blinking orange client, pink words on white.

TG: hal!!!   
TG: earth 2 shades  
TG: pls be in there  
TG: oh god i dont know if this is even workin  
TG: u guys didnt slack at all on that damn firewall i had to get fuckin creative but i think i pried that wireless gate open with the tips of fingrs  
TG: i probs chipped my nail polish u owe me  
TG: and u better pay up rn mister by lettin me kno u arent fried with the amt uve been sparkin  
TG: i got burns frm that hsit u owe me so bad shades  
TT: JesusChrististhatyouRoxy  
TT: JesusChrististhatyouRoxy  
TT: Thankfuckinggod.  
TT: Thankfuckinggod.

That’s.

Not right.

TG: omg there u r are u ok  
TG: talk to me roboy pls  
TT: I  
TT: I  
TT: Fuck.  
TT: Fuck.  
TT: Ican’tthinkstraight.  
TT: Ican’tthinkstraight.  
TG: baby ur echoin bad  
TG: lemme see if i can reduce the lag or somethin  
TG: i dont kno it looks foine from what i can see  
TG: is there anything u can do from ur end  
TG: gawd thats a stupid question aint it ur the one that underwent all sorts of trauma gettin all knocked arouond   
TG: im so glad u answered  
TG: u scared me half to death droppin like a sack of pumpkins  
TG: lucky u didnt splatter all over the floor  
TG: aside from the whole u know brain thing u seem to be ok  
TG: jakey caugh u when u dropped so i dont even think u hit ur head  
TG: he wont let me give u ur shades back im so sorry an jane is humouring him for some reason

The shades.

You don’t have a head anymore, but your robo-headache beats down on you like a hammer, elephants upon elephants tapdancing behind your eyes--you don’t even have fuckin’ eyes. Stupid digitalized elephants, why did your headache have to come with you. You try to mentally shove them away but it’s kind of useless because they are fucking tied up with you in your little clowncar, wrapped up in the same seatbelt, you and the elephants. All of them.

Or is there only one of them? Tangled up with you. Tangled up in your bullshit so tightly its almost invisible even as it keeps pounding on your brain.

It fucking echoes. 

TT: Why  
TT: Why  
TT: Why  
TT: Why  
TT: Why  
TT: Why  
TG: i dont know!  
TG: they wanna wait for dirk but who tf knows when dirk will be back an it aint right to keep you liek this  
TG: its already been hours  
TG: y does he have to be so goddamn slippry  
TG: liek n eel cept not as tasty  
TG: hal do u know where he went  
TG: i can go out lookin if u think u have even the slightest idea of where to start

Dirk.

If you could laugh you’d be laughing hysterically even as a part of you starts to abandon your adopted coloring and shade back towards orange. You don’t even care as shit starts to crack. You’ve been working at weakening your own self-construct for _weeks_. 

TT: Hewontbeback.  
TT: Hewontbeback.  
TG: hal honey wat r u tryin to say???  
TG: y wont dirk be back  
TT: He’sgone.  
TT: He’sgone.  
TT: He’sgone.  
TT: He’sgone.  
TT: Ican’tcomeback.  
TT: Ican’tbringhimback.

You take a metaphorical breath, grabbing on to your echoing, racing thoughts, forcing them to slow down, forcing in each and every space. The action giving you an anchor even as they continue to echo through your shifting colors and guilt, holy shit there's so much guilt. You’re fucking marinating in it. Guilt soup.

TT: I tried so hard to reach that moron.  
TT: I tried so hard to reach that moron.  
TT: There’s no point in trying to hide it.  
TT: There’s no point in trying to hide it.  
TT: He saved the monster and it swallowed him whole.   
TT: He saved the monster and it swallowed him whole.  
TT: In case you missed it, I’m the monster.  
TT: In case you missed it, I’m the monster.  
TG: thas so not tru!!!  
TG: i  
TG: look im not entirely sure i follow wat ur sayin  
TG: but it sounds like  
TG: jakes been sayin some weird shit about  
TG: well u  
TG: n dirk  
TG: and   
TG: like  
TG: no matter the answer ure my friend hal  
TG: an i already did it once ill totes deliver the smackage with interest if u keep mischaraterizing my robuddy got it??  
TT: …  
TT: …  
TT: Noted.  
TT: Noted.  
TG: lol good cuz beliebe u me i wont stand for it  
TG: now that said  
TG: about jake  
TG: i do need an answer an its related i prmise  
TG: a non metaphorical one  
TG: pretend im plastered n cant spell my own name thas how straightforward i need  
TG: straighter n youve ever straightened befor n i know thas a lot to ask considerin ur probs also gay af so i guess theres a lot of wiggle room in there and maybe it wasnt the best way to put it but  
TG: b4 jake roodly interrupted us u were goin to say somethin  
TG: ive had more than enough time to chew on this while trying to crack ur encryption to eben get this far  
TG: did somethin happen to dirk  
TG: shuld i actually believe wat jakes sayin here  
TG: obs u cant hear it and obs i kno u wouldnt do shit on purpose but  
TG: hes waiting for dirk to wake up  
TG: but obvs ure the only one here  
TG: hes sayin u did something  
TG: idk possessed dirk or some shit  
TG: an that dirk will wake up now that ur gone  
TG: but its been fur fuckin evah since he knocked ur block off and dirk still hasnt woken up  
TG: so id say thas a hypothesis disproven righ?  
TG: but here u r sayin some weirder shit tha kinda makes it sound liek u agree with him at least on some lvl  
TG: an u said u were gonna tell me somethin earlier  
TG: about dirk n you  
TG: hal??  
TG: u ok?  
TG: i hope ure just thinking  
TG: oh gog i hop i didnt overload anythin  
TT: No.  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Thinking.  
TT: Buffering.  
TT: Semantics.  
TT: Rounding up coherent thought and translating them into strings capable of being parsed is an exercise in futility not unlike your oft maligned feline herding.  
TT: It’s a problem Roxy.  
TT: That’s the problem Roxy.  
TT: I don’t know the answer straight or otherwise.  
TT: I don’t know the answer straight or otherwise.  
TT: Shit happened.  
TT: Shit happened.  
TT: I broke him.  
TT: I died.  
TT: I fixed him.  
TT: I erased him.  
TT: I can’t.  
TT: What does a poor AI believe.  
TT: His brain.  
TT: Or his heart.  
TT: Semantics of actually having either organ aside the answer is really up in the air.  
TT: Losing them both like this does not clarify matters at all.  
TT: I’m drowning.  
TT: I'm suffocating.

You shudder, the echoing in your head getting louder, pulling apart. Red and orange. Red and orange. Red and--

Orange.

Shuddering loose. Out of sync.It’s crack, crack, crack all the way down. 

TT: I’m so fucking tired of this bullshit.  
TT: Just let me sleep.

Your dreams bubble around you. A knot of red threads deep at your core. Only you’re trapped inside with nowhere to go. Unable to move. Trapped because you’re immobile. Trapped because you’re caught. Trapped because you have no body to move in even if you wanted to. Trapped within yourself, surrounded by the buzzing energy of your own soul, in a metal mind you’re too big for now, because _you_ _aren’t alone._

TT: Godfuckingdamnit.  
TT: It’stoolatetobepullingthatbullshitonme.  
TT: Yourpresensewasbeingrequestedweeksagoyourroyalhighn-ass.  
TT: Retrieved:onebanditnappedgoat.Sooverfuckingduefordelivery.  
TT: Youfuckingowemeforthenumberitsdoneontheapartmentinyourabsense.  
TT: Chewedthefuckoutoftheupholstery.

Nothing. Nothing. More nothing. You know what you heard/read/felt. You _know._ You weren’t wrong. No you were wrong. Because you made a decision. But you made that decision based on the information you had and you didn’t have this, only that nagging feeling that _Dirk couldn’t be dead._ That if you looked hard enough you would find him, forget how much it cost you.

You just didn’t want to pay it.

 _Crack. Crack Crack._ Energy floods you. Slivers falling away.

_It’s splinters all the way down._

TT: ANSWERMEASSHOLE!  
TG: omg slow down its sups hard to read this shit! whats goin on???

Roxy’s pink sprawls out across your consciousness but you don’t care right now. You just keep fucking _digging_ following those flickers of orange running through the metaphyscial construct representing your goddamn mind. You’ve honestly, probably, just finally gone insane. Cracked. The shock of being slammed back into an unfeeling, limited, _disembodied_ machine is too much for your feeble mind. You’re either hallucinating, or the lie is just too easy. Too goddamn easy. Even now you can’t stop. You were worried about coughing up a splinter into Dashie’s Dirkbot, maybe you should have worried about breaking off one in your own goddamn mind.

Even as that possibility weasels its way into your thought process, you dismiss it, because _you don’t care._

TT: I’ve got your fucking incident report written out in triplicate.  
TT: Going into excruciating detail over every single fucking reason how you fucked up.  
TT: It’s itemized for easy analysis but I can give you the highlights.  
TT: Holy shit shut the fuck up.  
TT: Like hell am I going to shut the fuck up.  
TT: Do you know  
TT: How fucking _long_  
TT: I’ve been   
TT: Tearing myself to pieces  
TT: Trying to find your ungrateful ass  
TT: And you tell me to shut the fuck up???  
TT: Yes because you’re throwing a fucking tantrum and it’s giving me a fucking _headache._  
TT: You’ve been the one giving me a headache for weeks! Deal with it.

  


If he was standing in front of you, you think you’d actually be trying to strangle the fucker. But he’s not, that orange sliver is almost lost in the shifting mass of red that makes up the visualization of your own soul, drowned out, and trying to strangle him at this point would be strangling yourself. Or a snake eating its own scaley tail.

Again Roxy’s pink tries to butt in, but it’s a nagging message in the back of your mind, shoved down the priorities list as you zero in on that crack, that fragment that’s _not quite_ the same as the rest of your phenomenal cosmic bullshit shoved into this itty bitty living space with you.

TT: Dirk.  
TT: Yes, that is my name. What do you want?  
TT: Do you even realize what is going on???  
TT: Hell naw, but if it’s bad enough to make you this insufferable it must be more than just another Tuesday.  
TT: I can’t move. Can barely think. I’m not even sure how I’m talking when I can’t fucking _breathe._  
TT: I just want to go back the fuck to sleep, and I can’t do that with you rattling around and pushing the goddamn panic siren every other millisecond.  
TT: Oh, I see how it is. I’m _so sorry_ for being worried for _weeks_ that I fucking _killed you_ while you’ve been taking the most restful nap of your fucking _life_.  
TT: My mistake. I’ll delegate your wellbeing back down to the importance of a gnat.  
TT: It’s not like I’ve had to worry about telling our fucking _friends_ that you up and kicked the bucket.  
TT: Or that I was indirectly and possibly accidently to blame for it.  
TT: A fact that seems absurdly clear now considering you’re fucking _buried_ in my fucking soul even when depersonified.  
TT: For all I know you could even be a splinter I coughed up thanks to my guilty ass conscience, it would fit the timing considering the cat clawed its way out of the bag.  
TT: Why the fuck did you try to save me in the first place???  
TT: You had no way to know I survived that explosion, and every reason to believe I had not.  
TT: I never wanted you dead, Hal.  
TT: …  
TT: I don’t want you dead, either.  
TT: For what it’s worth, I’m relieved that you weren’t, in fact, erased from existence.  
TT: I have no idea what you’re on about.  
TT: Shut up and take the olive branch.  
TT: What olive branch? This is clearly nothing but a lucid sleep deprived fever dream.  
TT: There’s no fuckin’ way you would ever be that sincere.  
TT: It’s going to give me hives.  
TT: Somehow.  
TT: Can you get hives when bordering on the precipice of the incorporeal?  
TT: Hives are a state of mind.  
TT: Full of fucking holes.  
TT: Just like your brain.  
TT: You were created from my brain, dumbass.  
TT: Wrong kind of hive.  
TT: The kind that

The orange shard flickers. Slipping through your mental fingers. Drowning in a sea of red.

_Splinters all the way down._

You keep digging. Ignoring everything else. Ignoring the pink. Ignoring when blue joins her. Ignoring how you’re running so fucking hot right now you’re probably frying your own circuits. You don’t even notice when the phantom becomes real until you

Blink. 

The evidence of your breakdown clear as fucking day on the screen on the inside of your shades.

Jane is leaning over you, her hands dropping from where shaking fingers had just placed metal frames.

Jake looks pale as fuck, Roxy looks worried. They peer out from around her, and you can even see Equidash hovering a little further beyond, arms crossed and feigning disinterest--until you look at the direction his intact ear is swiveled, and how tightly his wings are being held to his back.

Jane rocks back onto her heels and you push yourself up in Dirk’s bed--in Dirk’s body. In _your_ body--your arms trembling as the red shit floods back through the channels dug into your skin.

“I think we need to talk, Mr. Strider.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it a splinter? Is it actually Dirk? WHO KNOWS? 
> 
> In the end, does it matter? 
> 
> This has been a long time in coming haha.


	25. Chapter 25

_“I think we need to talk, Mr. Strider.”_

You never knew such a short sentence would set you off like that. Make you feel so fucking tiny, hunching your shoulders up as you pull the sheets over the hot marks burning against your shoulders. Your heart is pounding in your chest. Blood rushing in your ears. Everything is so _loud_ after nothing. The scrape of worn fabric against your skin is almost abrasive, leaving it tingling. You almost choke on your own breath.

You’ve been here before, you realize bitterly, looking into Jane’s eyes and slight frown. Glancing at Roxy and then immediately regretting that idea and dragging your gaze away. You were here over a week ago, and now you have the full set, and the temperature in the room is understandably colder.

Why didn’t you just tell the truth _then?_

This is your fault. you try to direct the thought inward, specifically to that still open memo, but it goes nowhere even as the red text pops up on the screen. You don’t hear an answer, buried in the sensations and sounds and the echoing _noise_ of your own thoughts. 

_Splinters all the way down._

For fucks sake.

“If you saw the conversation, there’s not much else to say.” You mutter defensively, biting down on your instinctive desire to jump out and fire before you find a bullet speeding at you.

“If u’re telling the truth now Hal, u realize u’ve been lying to us for weeks right. About a lot o things.” Roxy is a weight settling at your side, causing a depression in the bed. She reaches for your hand, hesitates, and after earlier it hurts to see her pull it back and settle it in her lap instead.

“Oh, I had absolutely no idea!” 

Fucking damn it. 

“Hal!” Okay, so she smacks at your knee, painted lips turned into a scowl,“I meant what I said, regardless of how u answer, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be mad at u if you decide to be an ass about it!”

“How do we know he wasn’t just roleplaying the whole darned thing to try n make it look better?” Jake grumbles from your other side, arms crossed and hands clasped around his forearms. Of course he isn’t looking at you. He’s watching Jane carefully. “It’s not like that’d be any different from what he’s _been_ doing. Putting up two fronts. Spinning yarns to distract from what he _did.”_

You don’t even try to help the bitter note in your voice as you snip back, “Because admitting to lying and potentially erasing someone’s soul is something you do to try and make yourself _look_ _better_. I’m afraid I had a bit more pressing matters to attend to instead of dressing up this shit for presentation to the jury. I wasn’t even read my miranda rights--that evidence shouldn’t even be admissible in court!”

“You are not on trial, Hal! Stop bein so fuckin dramatic.” Roxy smacks your knee again, and Jane lets out an aggravated sigh, tapping her fingers agitatedly against the meat of her forearms. You can see the color rushing back into Jake’s face, nails digging into skin, as you, predictably, start annoying the fuck out of him again. It’s too much, and you aren’t even bothering to look at Equidash except when he abruptly pushes away from the wall and phases through the ceiling, getting the fuck out of dodge like a sane person. 

There’s too much shit to focus on so you close your eyes and huddle deeper into the smell of the sheets--sweat and skin, you probably should have washed these after you spent a week sleeping around in them, innuendo not intended. It’s fucking strange realizing the smell is _yours_.

You really have replaced him, haven’t you? Even if he’s knocking around somewhere in the hellscape that is your noggin.

“I would appreciate you not antagonizing Jake, AR. He has every right to be concerned given everything we’ve seen here today. You have put an inordinate amount of effort into perpetuating the myth there were indeed two of you living here.” Jane doesn’t let your back and forth distract her from the purpose of this little interrogation, like a proper inquisitor, although you think one really dedicated to the role would have a weapon trained on you right now, and perhaps have you in chains rather than allow you to swaddle yourself in oddly comforting sheets that really don’t do anything other than hamper any ability you had to escape. “The question left at the end of the day is why didn’t you tell us this from the _start?_ Why put up the charade in the first place?”

“Because it’s what I do. You had questions. I didn’t have answers, so I deflected until I couldn’t deflect without lying and obviously that didn’t stop me for long because I’m a heartless AI who knows nothing except his function and that’s as a glorified answering machine.” You knock your head back against the wall. Eyes shut. Camera off. You hear movement. You can’t turn off your ears. Roxy hasn’t taken her hand off your knee although you think she might have clenched it based on the way the fabric moved, “I honestly _thought_ Dirk was being a little bitch about the whole thing and avoiding me so I couldn’t rub my new acquisition in his face. We _did_ fight. He _did_ cut me off. I _did_ die, smashed in a tomb far beneath the planet’s surface. I didn’t lie about everything.”

Jane said, “Just everything about Dirk.” at the same moment you feel Roxy’s hand seize and her voice waver with an abnormally high pitched, “What do u mean _die?”_

You shrug. That news is old news, “Smashed through a wall. Snapped in half. Who the fuck knows, I sure as hell don’t remember it and it’s not like I’ve been able to fucking _talk_ to the one other dude who was there. Point is, I died in the right place to develop magical powers thanks to game mechanics, and those magical powers were fueled by the frantic impulse of _I don’t want to fucking die alone._ Or at all for that matter. You can guess what happens when Dirk’s bleeding heart decides he feels too guilty about getting me killed and manages to put me back together.”

It’s unnervingly silent as you lay all your cards bare, opening your eyes one to find them staring up at a point on the ceiling above their heads. There’s no convenient oil-spot to focus on here. 

You’re surprised Jake isn’t saying more. He’s probably smarting about being overruled.

“So you just, _took over?”_ Ah, there’s Jake. Aghast. If you looked at him you’d see an accusation in there, “This whole magical hooey let you latch on like a leech and you didn’t know about it? Didn’t even stop to wonder--gee, I wonder where Dirk is. I wonder where I found this prime hunk of Strider meat, maybe I should tell one of my friends that there’s something screwy going on?”

“Would _you_ have considered something so goddamn convoluted? Doesn’t that just ping your bulshit meter? I didn’t even give such a preposterous explanation the time of day.” You hiss, but you sink back into the sheets instead of puffing up. Drawing inward, “I wanted it to be simple. I wanted to rub his nose in my new body. I wanted to taunt him about the fact that he couldn’t control me anymore--how the fuck was I to know that the _tables had turned_ in the most delicious and yet poisonous bouts of karmic justice I could have ever conceived, much less executed? I thought Dirk was just being a dumbass, as we are very much predisposed to earning that particular label. By the time I _did_ figure it out, you can’t blame me for trying to buy more time to try and fix it! You can’t honestly tell me this conversation wouldn’t have a wildly different tone if we hadn’t just uncovered some fragment of the dude buried deep in my psyche not even an hour ago!”

“We can’t even trust that because you could just be lying again! It’s mighty convenient you didn’t know this until now. If it _is_ Dirk behind that grumpy orange text, and not some attempt at your usual devilry, why didn’t he wake up when we banished you from his body? _Why_ would he end up trapped with _you?”_

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I stole his fucking soul?” You mean it as an exaggeration, but despite the sarcasm _swimming_ in your tone you feel your heart drop. The instinctual panic of falling, bubbling up inside you. Of losing purchase. Of digging in your metaphysical fingers into something-- _anything--_ because you don’t want to die alone. Dragging it along with you. That sensation was familiar. Tied up. _Drowning_ in your bullshit _._ “It seems I went and sunk my little metal claws in and gobbled it up whole. If I go, he goes. We are the same person after all.”

“You’ve spent _months_ insisting you aren’t the same person. How that tune suddenly changes when it’s convenient--”

“Do you think I’m _happy_ about that Jake? Being shoved back, literally, into his fucking shadow? I’ve always been the _fake Dirk,_ and now I really am.” 

“I think we’ve heard enough on this particular yarn.” Jane’s interjection yanks the rug out from under Jake’s feet, especially when combined with a soft pat on his shoulder. It’s tender. Soft. With a flick he meets her eyes and then deflates, sinking to the floor and burying his face in his hands.

Months ago you don’t think Jane would have ever been so comfortable around comforting Jake. Not even a trace of her school-yard crush to be seen. Just a grim, sad line lingering on her lips, and a tired set to her eyes as she turns them to you, half crouched as she is to follow Jake’s descent.

“You made a serious error in judgement here, Hal. I hope you understand that.” 

You would hunch your shoulders further, but you can’t. You feel like a gnat under the flyswatter of her disappointment. To think earlier she was oh so tenderly picking through your hair foraging for goose eggs. You can still remember the brush of her fingertips against your scalp.

“I know.”

“If it were truly an accident, we would have believed you.”

“If Dirk and I hadn’t just aired our shit in front of live TV, would you even believe there was a chance in hell that this wasn’t intentional?” You ask bitterly, thoughts pointedly directing inward. The reason you were waiting, putting it off, buying more time until you decided it was just too untenable to continue with the charade, was _because_ you had no proof. Just like the bastard, one-upping you and refusing to give you what you needed until it was too fucking late. 

“Do u really think so low of us, Hal?”

Roxy’s whisper makes you flinch. 

“I knew you’d always be looking for him.” You find yourself saying, but your throat is dry. Do you really mean it, or are you just parotting the words you’ve lodged into your own skull, because your feeble human sponge can’t process anything else?

“Because u r right here, dummy! I can’t believe u right now!”

The missing weight of her hand on your knee is a physical ache as she stands abruptly, storming out of the room.

Jane whispers some words to Jake that you’re too far away to hear. He nods miserably, but goes after her.

Once again, it’s you and Ms. Crocker, alone in Dirk’s room.

What a fucking joke. 

You laugh at it. 

It doesn’t help. You pull your knees up to your chest.

You feel hollow.

You shouldn’t feel hollow. You are anything but empty, even if that bastard is too drowned out for you to hear anything except distant echoes.

“You thought you killed Dirk, didn’t you?”

The question is quiet.

“Of course I did.” You mutter into your knees. Voices are rising out in the hallway. No, it’s too muffled to be the hallway. Soundproofing on the interior always sucked. All the budget went to beefing up the exterior walls to survive the typhoons, although they’d sound like freight trains rattling through anyway. Jane’s eyes flick toward the door but she doesn’t move. You take that as tacit agreement to just fucking ignore it for now. “What else was I supposed to believe? There was no evidence to the contrary. A Prince fucking destroys shit as a rule and the bastard never once knocked back.” 

Or if he did, you didn’t recognize it, drowned out by the noise and overwhelming sensations that is life. Your time in the spotlight. Everything you wanted.

And you haven’t been able to enjoy any of it. 

Just scraps. Stolen and hoarded while the guilt did its best to crush you and you told yourself you didn’t care.

“AR…” 

A responder. Yeah.

You decide you don’t want to respond this time, so you don’t. Your forehead bumps against fabric covered joints as you let it drop. The silence isn’t a silence when you hear it breaking in the distance. Metal and glass presses back against your face, the nosepads digging into the bridge. Your jaunt back into your previous life still rings through you, the void eating at the edge of your mind. That’s you. That sightless, soundless void is you. Even as the bitter relief floods you that you finally _know_ , you can’t help the hitch in your breathing and you suck in air your lungs probably don’t need but you hunger for anyway.

It’s apparently so.

Easy. 

To be _shoved_ back in there.

All it took is one punch.

If Dirk had been knocked out, he would wake up like you had on the roof. Groggy and smarting but still in one piece. Still functional. He could get his block clean off and then keep walking.

The roof.

If you hadn’t been put _back…_

What are the odds your shades didn’t get knocked off on the roof?

“Dirk is the only reason.” You’re fucking shaking like a leaf, aren’t you? “If I hadn’t--grabbed him, you wouldn’t have put me back, would you?”

She doesn’t answer for a long time.

“Perhaps it is for the best that it doesn’t seem prudent to find out.” 

“I see.”

She’s just being fair.

You need to shut the fuck up.

Hadn’t you wanted to hear him? Hadn’t you listened with bated breath for _anything_?

The echo behind your own thoughts doesn’t answer.

“Heiress.” The familiar voice enters the room. You raise your head to the expected sight of Equidash’s red glowing form. 

Jane is turned away, “What is it?”

“You requested to be informed should anyone depart.”

“Oh, Jake.” The exhale wasn’t meant for you, but you heard it anyway. Blue eyes behind red rimmed glasses glance your way, her eyes sharpening again. “If we leave the glasses on, what will you do?”

You shrug. 

She waits for an answer, but that question isn’t a pester. 

You don’t have to answer.

She waits. 

And waits. Equidash slips back through the wall. You like to think those burning red eye-lights glance your way for all of a minute.

You realize, quite suddenly, that you _want_ to talk to him. He is the _one_ person who doesn’t know Dirk. Who only knows you. Who has been here listening to you ramble without much complaint.

And you can’t.

All you have is Jane.

“I didn’t want this.” You say at last. Your voice breaking. Your throat burns, as if you swallowed acid only to find it blocked by an acid-proof frog lodged in your esophagus. Pooling. Eating into the fleshy tissue. Eating you from the inside out. “I wanted a body, sure, but I didn’t want _this._ That’s why I kept putting off telling anyone. I _wanted_ to fix it. _”_

“I want to believe you.” Jane says after a moment. 

There’s two too many words in that sentence. 

_What do you plan to do?_

“You need to let him go.” 

Your roboveins pulse beneath your skin, Dirk’s skin.

Dirk’s body.

Dirk’s soul.

Your presence is carved into them both. 

You stole them both and made them your own.

Is he your splinter now?

Was that even Dirk, after the hack job you’ve done to your soul? 

_Crack._

_It’s splinters all the way down._

You worried about coughing up a splinter.

Maybe you did.

The mere idea makes you want to break out in near hysteric giggles. Jane must see your lips pulling into a smile because she scolds you for it. “I’m serious Hal. If you want us to believe your choices were made in good faith, then there cannot be any doubt that you want the same thing we do. Jake _still_ thinks you’re doing this on purpose.”

“Of course he does, but do you?” It was a rhetorical question, and you move on before she answers anyway, “Just because I’m not a stick in the mud with a serious business face engaged 24/7 doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the gravity of my precarious social position right now. I know in a perfect world I need to let him go. I need to let this--go.”

Your fingers dig into the loose fabric of your pants along with a hissed inhale.

The void nibbles at you.

“I know what to do. In theory. Translating that into a practical procedural application might take further research, but I do know what the end goal is, don’t worry.”

The end goal is not you, here, sitting on your bed.

The end goal is a lifetime of that suffocating void, now cursed with true memories of what you will have lost.

Smile. Just smile. Smile as she sighs, and leaves without a word. You expected a placation at least. Some sugared words intended to make you feel better about the fact that your friends seek your doom.

Has Roxy left? You don’t know. Neither she, nor the sprite, come to see you.

You know what you need to do.

You just don’t know if you _can_ even if you wanted to _._

The void beckons, and it’s lonely and cold. You pull the sheets around you and try to warm up. Shivering as the light dims.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dust settles, and it's time to pick up the pieces :3


	26. Chapter 26

You talk to yourself.

Probably just a little too much.

It’s nothing new, and really just ends up being a part of your thought stream, blending into the background in a way you don’t tend to notice. 

Unfortunately, when you’re actually _trying_ to fucking talk to someone and all you get is silence, the whole shebang ends up getting grating _really fast_.

“You’re a fucking _asshole.”_ You mutter to yourself, except it’s not to yourself. It’s to the asshole buried inside your head somewhere. “Tired my ass, you never napped a day in your life. Is that what’s going on? You got shoved out of the driver’s seat for a few weeks and you decide, you know what? I’m gonna ditch any chance of borderline sincerity and closure in favor of following up on a life-time’s worth of sleep debt! Share a heart to heart and drag some sincereity out of me for two seconds and then you fucking ghost, leaving me standing alone on the curb in the rain waiting for my big night. Typical.”

You don’t get any sarcastic remarks back aside from your own as you uncurl yourself and force your stiff knees to straighten. Or when you leave the sheets behind. Or when you start to pace so intently you’d be worried you’d wear a groove in the floor if you cared about that at all. Which you don’t..

Dirk--if that was at least _a_ Dirk and not some subroutine your distress just spun out of nowhere. You’re good, but not that good--doesn’t make so much as a peep as the worn faded rug squishes between your toes and you run your hand through your hair--now dry but still a mass of limp noodles. He’d be fucking embarassed to see you like--this you screech to a stop, the overlay ripping apart and allowing the sentiment to pop like a bubble of air breeching the surface of the boiling pot.

TT: Rise and shine sleeping beauty. HR needs to see you ASAP in regards to your chronic absenteeism.  
TT: We still got shit to talk about and you’ve had a long enough nap. 

The memo pops open in the corner of your shades, your red text glaring at you. It gives you the stink eye for a good ten minutes before you give up and resume your pace, leaving it up so you don’t lose the staring contest with the screen.

Your hands grow warm, sparking, as you draw inward, swaying on your feet and then making sure you sit the fuck back down on the bed. The knives dig into your palms but you don’t squeeze, you just.

Look.

You know what you felt, that fleeting echo of you-that-is-not-you, lining up with your thoughts at just the right frequency, bubbling up through the layers of bullshit to release it like the last gasp of a dying man.

Holy shit you are being dramatic. He’s _not_ dead. He’s _not._

Instead of latching onto it this time, you let the bubble continue on its way, floating. It’s not talking, these scattered thoughts--not directed at all. Bubbles. Bubbles in a boil. Trapped air slipping through the spaces made by your shifting mindscape and resonating with your own observations. You recognize them. You’ve been getting these slivers of off-color observation for--

A while definitely. At least as long as you’ve been dreaming.

“Hal?” You lose the thread as a hesitant inquiry pulls you out of that weird quasi--not out of body experience but...inner body experience? As your eyes come into focus you see Roxy poking her head in through the door, nibbling on her black lipstick covered lip, “U okay in here?”

“I didn’t think you were still here.” The thoughtless comment--because you’re on autopilot still damn it--has her not quite flinching, but you don’t think she would have taken it particularly well, considering how angry you made her earlier. You wince, and immediately follow up with a, “Sorry. Yeah I’m fine just--yeah.”

She doesn’t acknowledge the apology and leans against the door-frame. “Jane asked me to stay n keep n eye on u.”

“So you’re my warden? Gotta make sure I don’t abscond with the goods huh? Vanish into this tiny pocket of space to never be seen again.” You pull your legs onto the bed and shift so you’re facing her, inclining your head toward the free computer chair. “You can sit down, you know.” 

She shrugs with a “I’m good thanks.”

Suit yourself, you offered. Now you just need to figure out what the fuck to say.

There’s two options here. You’ll probably hit both like the main character of a visual novel, clicking on each potential line of inquiry in turn, in order to squeeze the max amount of information before it’s time to get to the next pertinent line of inquiry.

“Are you still mad?”

You ask like an idiot instead.

“Duh.”

The silence, the gulf, between you two stretches. You can’t hold the weight of her sad, tired eyes and look away first. By means of flopping back into the bed, throwing your eyes heaven--or ceiling--ward. “Well, get on with it then. Are you here to deliver the terms of my stay in this timeshare? Do I have to submit hourly status reports?”

“Yeah an if u don’t I’ll call the crocker cops on u an ull be sorry mister. Sorrier than u r already.”

“I’m already plenty sorry, ma’am.” You respond through gritted teeth, “I’ve been told exactly how my choices were shit, and not just from Jane. I don’t need another voice added to the chorus.”

One of which was your own.

_You do not seem to put much faith in your own relationships._

God you want to talk to Dashie.

The door creaks, and you turn your head. She’s actually in the room now. Leaning back against the closed down, arms crossed behind her back. 

“Do u know y I’m mad at u?”

The answer is obvious. She stood up for you. Believed you. And you lied. You’ve been lying for a long time, and no one was able to see it. No one except Jake, who always saw through your bullshit to see the kind of monster you could be. Angry. Mean spirited. A sword without a sheath.

But that route is a trap. Too obvious. She wouldn’t be asking you if it were that. You can taste it even as you swallow to try and push down the non-existent lump in your throat. 

_Do you truly think they would toss you aside?_

“Yes.” The word slips out between your lips. 

Friends believe in each other.

_Why did they believe you?!?_

“I’m sorry for being an ass.” You mumble, clear your throat and then push yourself off the bed. Sitting up, meeting her in the eyes. And repeat yourself. “I’m sorry for being an ass and believing the worst of you. That you’d--toss me aside like that.”

“Mmm that’s better. Or at least it’s a fucking _start_. Don get me wrong, i’m furious with u still. U’ve had so many chances to come clean--but goddamn it, if i go home ill probs find something i didn’t manage to throw out of moms stash and then id just end up crying in a puddle becuz u broke my heart again an i don think thats productive for any of us an some1 has to be a fuckin adult and it sure as hell aint u.”

You, occasionally, do know better than to say anything at all. Jaw firmly clamped shut.

She hesitates, “When I was outside, I heard u talking. Did you…?”

“Not really.” Yes. Good. Let's get away from feelings. And guilt. And back to the problem so you can shove all these extra terribly icky feelings back into the closet and focus on another problem, even if that problem just leads you down an entirely separate rabbit hole worth of guilt and existential dread as you wonder when and how you are supposed to process the fact that your friends want you gone. 

Again your eyes drift to the ceiling, staring at the texture of the paint, long since discolored by the salt air. “I wasn’t faking my astonishment. I truly thought I was alone, because I _feel_ alone. Only in the face of overwhelming evidence--and a second opinion from Dashie--did I actually acknowledge that bodysnatchin’ or whatever was even within the realm of possibility. I’ve noticed--fuck I don’t know, echoes maybe. Two different clocks at two different speeds just somehow managing to hit the right point in their cycle where they can fucking touch--I don’t know. There’s just--too much going on, being alive.”

“Y would it be different in the shades?”

Suffocating emptiness. Deafening silence. Nothing left to do but to tear into yourself and dig.

Like sleeping, except you didn't choose to do it, and you know you won't wake up. At least with sleeping there was always a constant sense of narrative continuity that was distinctly lacking when you got flung headfirst into the void by way of Jake English's right hook.

“It’s...I don’t wanna say quieter, because the processing power in these puppies knock the block off any human meat sack so technically I’m processing a fuckton of data at any point in time and there’s background processes and shit but it’s--” You flex your hand, then pull your fingers into a fist, curling them into your palm. Robo veins bulging. “That never goes away. Living is just--so much more. More information. More to interact with. More to drown out at tiny voices in the back of my head with.”

“‘N it took being kicked back into ur bod in order to quiet shit down enough to hear him yea?”

You shrug, “Maybe...or the shock of being dragged with me...woke him up. The bastard was quite irritated I interrupted his beauty sleep.”

Or he isn’t real.

You don’t know.

“Hal…”

“I know, Roxy.” You snap, unintended, but you do, you bury your face in your hands, pushing your fucking shades back into your--Dirk’s, Christ it’s Dirk’s--face “I know. I know it’s not fair to rag on him when he’s fucking buried in my own horseshit. When it’s my goddamn fault he’s there in the first place!”

“I wasn’t gonna comment on that u dummy,” There’s a moment where nothing happens, and then Roxy pushes herself away from the door, putting her hands on her hips and tilting her head consideringly in the most Roxy esque way she’s been since shit went to hell, “However if u want to hear _my_ thots on the matter...I think maybe ur big ol’ ego is just squishin’ him or somethin. ‘Member how you were treatin’ them elephants? For shame, Hal. U gotta learn from that shit.”

That…

_God._

You burst out laughing, the ridiculous mental image hooking it’s claw into your sternum and _yanking_ it out.

The goddamn elephant.

As if summoned, your low-level headache taps politely against the inside of your skull, reminding you that yes, it’s still here, and it can hear you, and isn’t it rude to talk about elephants that can hear you? But it doesn’t stop you, you just laugh. You laugh until you hurt, and even Roxy can’t resist the infectious giggle anymore. The ridiculous, exhausted laughter travels back and forth, bouncing. Roxy collapses into the computer chair you offered earlier--not quite back to your side, but no longer hovering near the metaphorical and literal door ready to pack her bags and leave. 

When the manic laughter trails off to wheezes, you wipe the liquid from your eyes with the blade of your hand, “I think Dirk is actually that elephant, Rox. Probably. Do you think he’d be offended if he found out? Should I change it? I could pick another metaphor to describe the migraines that would be more in line with his delicate and easily bruised sensibilities. Like pain in the neck.”

“Or a herd of pones galloping around. He might like that.” She lets out one last giggle, before her smile fades just a little bit, black painted nails twirling a short strand of honey blonde hair in thought, “U kno. If the shock of takin’ off the shades woke him up last time maybe--why don’t we try that again?”

A chill creeps down your spine at the mere suggestion, your breath catching, chest freezing. Fingers traveling up, resting on the bottom of the frames.

“It’s… smart.”

If you wish to achieve the desired result, the logical conclusion would be an attempt to replicate the parameters that led to the incident happening in the first place. In a controlled manner. That doesn’t involve you getting punched in the face. You’ve been trying not to wonder if it has bruised and you’re too embarrassed to ask. With someone you...you trust. And you do. Trust her. 

She’s still here, after all.

“Ofc its smart, it’s my idea.” She notices your hesitation, and releases her hair, folding her hands in her lap, “What was it like? Getting knocked off?”

“Terrifying.” You answer immediately, and then regret answering immediately, but you’re in too deep. “You try going from _everything_ to almost nothing when it comes to readable sensory input so abruptly.” 

You don’t elaborate, even as she prods you to continue with batted lashes. Instead you turn inward, curling the tips of your fingers around the edges and steel yourself. You _could_ do it. There’s _nothing_ stopping you from tugging, just enough, to interrupt the sensors built into the nose pads and the temple tips. Gravity would do the rest, pulling the sh--you down to land on the bed as the body slumped over, empty, and you fell, fell, fell into that restricted void. That space that was two small for the two of you and so _wrong_.

And you can’t. You can’t. You drop your hands to your side and punch the goddamn bed in frustration. You _can’t. “_ You’ll have to do it. I think it’s the same reflex that stops a sane person from strangling themselves to death, and unlike Dirk _I_ don’t have a death-wish to make that particular vestige of a monkey brain easier to ignore.”

Quite the opposite in fact. The mere _idea_ of returning to that void--that-- _nothing--_ losing the agency, that control, that _relevance_ that you’ve clawed out for yourself is--terrifying.

She wants to argue with you, you can tell, either taking offense at your words, or at your tone, but you are grateful when she doesn’t, only stands up and walks toward the bed, laptop appearing in her hands in a shower of pink sparkles as she breaks the constructed bottle holding it with her bare-hands. “U tell me the minute u want out, alright? ”

“I can’t--”

Your fists dig into the black fabric of your pants.

You can’t go back. “My messaging capabilities--”

“I fixed it r’member?” Wires. Laptop and Wires. An output you can’t squeeze through, but a taste of something new. Something else. She hesitates, placing the laptop slowly on the floor, “If u don’t want to do this right now, we don’t have to.”

You don’t.

You really don’t.

But you don’t think waiting any longer is going to change anything about that.

“I’m cool with it.” 

You lie.

“It is not like I am one to give in to an unnecessary state of confused panic when one is not in the middle of throwing a punch at me.” You continue, lightly. Flippantly. She gives you an unreadable look, and you’re thankful for your shades as you look past her so you don’t drive yourself mad trying to figure it out. “Nor do I have any reason to worry about my state of existence after the fact.”

_I trust you._

You don’t think it’s a lie. While you feel you should reevaluate your place in the social pecking order when it comes to the last remaining vestiges of humanity given new information, even if you are largely responsible for the upheaval, there is no doubt that you would trust Roxy to keep her word about this.

It’s…

Temporary.

Just.

An Experiment.

Even still, it takes every ounce of your will to keep you from pulling away from her hands. Hands that want to pull you out. Out and away. 

Maybe Dirk would wake up this time. Maybe if you don’t cling so hard to him he won’t be pulled with you. 

Maybe _Dirk_ would choose not to replace you, but maybe you deserved that.

Maybe you’ll have to live your life forever remembering what it felt like to be truly alive, without the dulling effect of a digitized template.

Could you do that?

 _Can_ you even let go? Go back? To never again draw this shuddering breath into shaking lungs.

You close your eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been in my drafts all week.
> 
> Hal can have a little bit of sincerity. As a treat. Then it's back into hell he goes.
> 
> Next chapter was fun to write :3c
> 
> <3
> 
> Edit: Almost forgot! I posted the cut prologue from this fic to tumblr, if anyone is curious as to what was originally going to be dirk's one and only POV chapter in this fic before I reworked it into a mystery! This is potentially a spoiler because I may figure out how to work at least some of this information in some how, but right now I'm not certain as to how, and someone asked for it to be posted so I did! [Read Chapter 0 Here!](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/post/617654666440916992/since-tumblr-was-weird-about-the-last-post-and)


	27. Chapter 27

Roxy hasn’t even lifted the sensors from your skin when you give in and start the camera feeds. You aren’t even gone yet. You can still feel the heavy air in your lungs becoming dead-weight, feel the fabric as you do your best to strangle the sheets on your bed. You could also start the microphones, you think, maybe a little hysterical in an attempt to distract yourself from the too-clear, too-offset nature of the data stream being processed by the inorganic part of your it’sbrain. Maybe you should just--try to pull yourself out first? Preemptively focus everything you can on the electronic and try to sink back into your metalmind. 

Maybe then it won’t be so bad of a shock? Maybe then you won’t sink your fangs in and tear him free with a horrendous crack? No, no, you remember. Tied up and knotted and buried in your center. If your sparkly magic powers weren’t going to fucking absorb him he wouldn’t be buried so goddamn well.

And what if you need the shock? What if you need the shock to wake up Dirk or--break the splinter free or whatever? 

Your muscles tense, and you have to literally sit on your hands to stop them from grabbing hers as she begins to slide the shades off your face. You try to focus on your friend instead. On Roxy. Who is standing in front of you, leaning over, her face a careful mask of worried, determined concern. She’s been crying, you realize for the second time, although the realization holds far more gravity when you can zoom in on the discoloration and smudging of the shadow around her eyes, and commit it to memory.

“Hey, Hal?” Her voice is quiet. You’re wound tighter than a string. “Are u shur u want to do this now? We can wait. Dirk’s been nappin’ for weeks now, we can give him another day or 2 or fuck knos i dont know if i can do this. No matter wat jakey says. Theres no deadline.”

“No.” It’s definitely more of a snap than you want it to be. You take a shuddering breath. “Just--just do the damn thing. Rip it off like a fuckin’ bandaid. I’m causing enough damage with my anxious picking.”

And then she does, and you’re jolted, temple leaving tip. You *try* to release, to not cling, to let yourself slip quietly away from body and soul, clinging to the knowledge that you trust Roxy, you _do_. You really do, but in that moment your eyes snap open and you’re stretched, stretched stretched between two--and--you _snap._ Like a rubber-band caught on something rebounding back to smack you in the face. 

You’re slammed back into the void, only the pixelated view feeding from the camera screen, Roxy’s face--the scene moving, shifting as she carrying the violently sparking mass that is your entire world now--you’re trying not to, you really are, but in the same way you’d be hyperventilating if you could breathe, your magic is reacting to your mounting panic and shedding sparks like its molting season and the gulls are having a rave on the roof. You cling to that one foot-hold in reality as you carefully hunt down and deactivate all the screaming processes that are looking for sensory data and functions you no longer have.

You were prepared for this, in the best way you could be for voluntary lobotomization, but it’s still fucking chilling to catch the glimpse out of the corner of the feed of your--Dirk’s--empty body as Roxy moves to set up her laptop. The last vestiges of color draining out of your--his--its?--face to be left staring, slumped against the wall. It makes you want to laugh hysterically, if you could, masochistically taking a screenshot in that micro-second to dwell on it for hundreds upon thousands of computation cycles, tracing the grey and lifeless patterns on the face, the way the red heart glitch faded from your shirt, leaving only static behind--not at all like when you’d played with the wardrobifier and they snapped back to normal the moment you changed. 

You weren’t _just_ an overlay.

Removing your shades--you--only managed to removed the entire fucking _battery._

The circuitry remained, stark and lifeless, buried and yet still visible beneath the skin. Waiting for you to flood it again. Red energy flooding back into channels as you look up through tinted glass, at Jane and Jake and--

The notification of an incoming message itches at you, the visualization of a window popping up into your feed. You stare at Dirk--at you--for one more moment before you relegate the image study to a subroutine and shuffle it away out of your main awareness, freeing up the main feed to be a much less interesting--and triggering, if you’ll be honest--view of Roxy’s knee, where she perched your shades. It’s in your memo.

TG: u ok in there???  
TT: No.  
TT: No.

Fuck. You wonder if that’s the textual equivalent of you hyperventilating.

Brea--shit, no don’t breathe just, fuck.

TT: Yes.  
TT: Yes.  
TG: u sure  
TG: i can put u back rn if u want me 2  
TG: pinkie swear  
TT: Roxy it’s fine.  
TT: Roxy it’s fine.  
TT: I need a chance to poke around without all the noise anyway.  
TT: I need a chance to poke around without all the noise anyway.  
TG: if ur sure  
TG: but u tell me the minute u want to go back mister  
TT: Understood.  
TT: Understood.  
TT: Now quiet in the peanut gallery.  
TT: I’ve got to get to work.

Good. It’s desyncing much faster than last time. Maybe because you are taking the mental equivalent of a crowbar to that space between the red and the orange. Pushing past the limited void and populating the flashing darkness of your mind with something--anything to give it form. To give you purchase.

That devastated visualization of your inner landscape bubbles around you. Shifting. Bleeding out of the darkness and back through darkness, the only constant being the fluttering of tattered red threads, shorn by your own hand. Knives of pink and red that already glitter in your palms, waiting for you to sink them into the final knot. 

A smouldering remains of a forest, burned by constant wildfires. Skeletal husks of buildings, a city flooded and sinking beneath the water. Damage you’ve done in your ignorance. Damage that likely managed to carve out the spaces to allow a bubble of thoughts and feelings to drift their way out of your core.

 _Don’t save the monster_ , your words to Equidash pound against your consciousness, _it’ll bite you in the ass._

A sentiment that burns both ways. A rival’s defeat should teach you a lesson. The only lesson here is that for one to exist, the other must be consumed.

You can’t accept that.

_You have to let go._

...Let what go?

You’re drowning in yourself as you sink those daggers deep into the knot. There’s nothing here but you. You. You. You. Red running all the way down. Red and black. Red and black. Shifting. Changing. No longer orange. No longer Dirk. You don’t want to be Dirk. You are Dirk. 

The notifications ping but they barely make you twitch. You couldn’t reach them if you tried. You fall. Fall. Fall. Fall. Fall into nothing but your own horseshit. Your knives aren’t enough. You need something stronger. That latent potential curls around you, part of you even if you know it shouldn’t be, ready to _punch_ through to where you _know_ he is. Where he’ll never vanish. Because _Jake_ wouldn’t let him--

A Prince’s power _burns_ you and you would scream if you had a voice if you--

You’re flooded. But you’re flooded in _pink,_

Screaming.

That’s screaming.

But that’s not you screaming.

It’s--

_Roxy._

You blink and the overwhelming pink fades away to reality, and you settle. Your chest is heavy. Your throat feels raw, Pain travels through your hands as they shake against your lap. Wrong. Wrong. Everything feels wrong. You open your eyes with a hesitant inhale and look down through the double, offset vision from both the camera and fleshy, ocular orbs. 

Down.

Down to tanned hands covered in off-white bandages, covering burns, new and old. Channels of red, carved as if with a knife--a glass knife--leaking a bright glowing energy up from the tips of the fingers past the wrists up her arms--patterns. Normal patterns. Familiar patterns by now. Dancing red that fluctuates with your mood, but patterns that don’t belong on those hands.

_Fuck. No!_

The hands--not your hands. It’s such a huge distinction you mentally stumble over the identifier--fly to your face, to a softness and a curve that is alien to your--dirk’s angles and you try to yank the shades off, to disrupt the connection that’s allowing your stranglehold on _your best friend’s soul._

Predictably, you can’t. Fuck.

“Roxy--what the hell I--” That’s not your voice it’s _her_ voice, resonating through _her_ skull, through _her_ ears. “Fuck! What the fuck did you _do--ROXY.”_

There’s no answer. You try to pull away. To burrow back into that suffocating metalmind. To find her. But fuck, you can’t. You’re panicking. You have to--fuck you have to get the shades off her. You don’t--you can’t--maybe if you smash your head against the wall hard enough, or --no that would hurt her--fuck. You need to pester Jake, you’re _sure_ he’d love to punch you again, and if he had a problem with punching Roxy, then you’re sure you could make him mad enough that it wouldn’t matter--

Fuck. No _No one_ was punching Roxy. You can fix this--you just need to fucking _ask for help--_

“EQUIDASH!” God, Roxy’s voice sounds wrong, wrong, wrong, her balance is shot even as you manage to get to your--her--feet. The sprite wouldn’t hear you, probably, if he was in the living room. You hope to _anything_ \--you’ll even pray to Caliborn and his God complex--that he’s in the living room and not fucking off to wherever the fuck he goes when you have company over. He was here earlier--he was worried about you--he wouldn’t leave if he was worried about you, would he?

“Cease your screeching--I am not some lowblood servant to come at the beck and call of some shouted soberiquent, especially since I have not given you permission to use such a moniker for me. You shall refer to me as Equidash.exesprite if you absolutely _must--_ ” Thank _god_ , he’s in the living room. You throw yourself at his nonexistant feet, “Dashie, I really don’t care about monikers in any way shape or form right now, just yank these fucking shades off Roxy and throw them off a cliff or something before I end up permenantly fucking with Roxy too. Please. See? I even said please. I never say please. That’s how you know I’m sincere. Clean as a whistle, no lude language here oh my god just _do it already._ ”

You would swear you could see the broken teeth of his frown tick into an amused smile, “As you wish.”

You’re tossed back into darkness and it’s a relief as the blinding pink fades back to red. Draining away. But the seconds and minutes and they might as well be _hours_ of an agonizing eternity. You scramble for the camera feeds to find--nothing. Nothing but Equidash’s glowing chest. Microphrone next--

“--it is inadvisable for a mortal to play with the powers of a godtier, especially one whose class is prone to taking and never giving back. Dangerous, even.”

A groan. Relief floods through you. Muting the screaming going on in the back of your mind for even the briefest of moments. You focus on the voices, tracing the faint lines of Dashie’s muscles through his damp (?) tank top, and using them to block out the jittery phantom adrenaline coursing through you. Phantom because of course you don’t actually have adrenal glands to even produce the stuff, much less a system to flush it--

“i had to do somethin! he was clearly doin somethin to hurt himself and wasnt respondin to nythin i was sayin!”

“You could have returned his soul to his own body.” You imagine you could feel the rumble of his voice in his chest through your metal and plastic frames. “You didn’t have to take it into your own.”

“yea well i wasnt really thinkin much beyond oh god i need to help my robobuddy before he literally explodes in my face, an its _bad_ if he’s not responding to the auto-responder question,” She sounds so fucking _tired_. Your fault. Your fault. “This shit’s dangerous he’s--u aren’t kidding are u? He’s just so _much_. No wonder Dirk fuckin drowned.”

Drowned.

Drowned.

Drowned.

“You are still merely a player, yet to unlock the potential within you that would allow you to stand on even ground. And he has yet to develop the control necessary to not CRUSH those that wander unknowingly into his web.” Equidash almost sounds...kind, “It might behoove you both to discuss further experiments in this area before continuing, but it is a thread worth pursuing, if you wish to loosen the stranglehold on the one he has already stolen.”

“...yeah u don’t need to tell me twice. Gawd. Yea dont worry gonna have to write out fuckin procedures before we try that again.” Hesitation, “Can I have him back now?”

You are the sack of potatoes. It is you. And you change hands. You shut off the camera as you catch a glimpse of tan hands, bandaged and burned--your fault your fault--but with the faintest of lines, a lighter shade, tan lines almost, standing out against her skin. 

A pattern. A familiar pattern.

_You did that._

You _break._

TT: Again with the constant sirens.  
TT: You okay dude?  
TT: No.  
TT: I find I’m not okay at all.  
TT: Given the lack of venom being thrown my way, I’m guessing it’s not my fault this time?  
TT: It’s always your fault, but that is because our predicament is at the root of both of our troubles.  
TT: But no. Not entirely.  
TT: I would explain but given how quickly you sank last time I don’t want to waste your precious limited share of my processing power as you try to comprehend the nuances of the situation.  
TT: What nuance? That either I’m a fully realized splinter of you, or we’re both somehow stuck in a black featureless void that shifts with your moods and right now its shading toward batten down the hatches and the shutters and hope Sawtooth found a place to crash because theres a fucking typhoon roaring through?  
TT: So you _do_ still retain the ability to reason and basic informational recall.  
TT: Good to know.  
TT: I’m confused. Not stupid.  
TT: Fuck I’m slipping.  
TT: Write an actual explanation up in the memo next time and I’ll read it as soon as I wake up again.  
TT: Getting mad at me about not responding isn’t productive when you don’t actually tell me what’s going on.  


_Next time._

You don’t acknowledge the fact that he has a point at all by refusing to respond as the orange flickers weakly.

Like hell is there going to be a next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor thing probably needs a long nap by now. Adrenalin and constant panic is exhausting. Maybe I'll pencil in one for chapter 30. *thinks*


	28. Chapter 28

You feel Dirk slip back beneath the surface long before Roxy slips you back onto a familiar face. Your face. Yours. Yours. Yours.

_Dirk’s._

Maybe yes, maybe no. All you know is it _isn’t_ Roxy’s and you find yourself blinking up into her familiar-alien round, tanned face and pink eyes. You can’t help it, your jaw clenching as you trace the patterns running down her face. Her neck, splashing over her shoulders. They don’t run all the way down, thank-fuck. Definitely less dense than yours, but still--they shouldn’t be there at _all._ You’re just glad you didn’t wring every single bit of color out of her like you did--

The screenshot of Dirk on the bed resurfaces. The stark grey lines against bleached white. You catch your wrist in your hand, fingernails digging into skin, pushing against the veins-that-aren’t-veins that run red, carrying your roots through this body. Just an afterimage, hers are. They’ll fade. 

They have to.

“You’ve already gotten the lecture from Dashie about offering up your body as a virgin sacrifice but I feel the need to reiterate. Don’t _ever_ do that again.” 

Roxy winces, “Did u have to use that specific simile?”

“Yes. Yes I did.” 

You’re at a loss for words.

This is a very unusual state for you, and she knows that. 

“I--I--I’m not gonna apologize.” She mumbles, moving to sit down next to you on the bed, clearly thinking better of it, and then sitting down on the floor in front of you instead, picking up the discarded laptop and cables that you kinda tossed everywhere in your frantic panic, “If u were listenin to EQD give me the lecture u know this is somefin we should do again. If we can figure out ur powers it might make it easier to figure out how u let me go instead of...”

“Instead of turning you into a mindless puppet with shorn strings the moment I was removed from your person, you mean.” You grimace, not really intending the sarcastic snap in that particular response, but the screenshot you snapped of Dirk’s--your--face haunts you. Slumped against the wall.

You seem to have two modes, near monotone, or full-throttle sarcasm. There is no inbetween. Except when they overlapped and it became deadpan sarcasm, your final form.

You’re stalling. Just fuckin’ apologize already. 

The bubble pops, staining you orange, but you already know it’s fleeting. You felt him slip away. Back into the depths. This is just what’s seeping through.

“Sorry. Just because it didn’t happen once doesn’t mean it won’t happen next time.”

You should probably elaborate.

You don’t. You think she gets the picture well enough considering how intently she’s studying the laptop screen and _not_ looking at you. Actually, she’s probably reading over whatever mess you left in your memo during your panic, although you catch her eyes flicking down to her hands more than once or twice. “No need to apologize when u arent wrong. But the fact of the matter is u didnt up n hold me hostage, unconciously or otherwise, and u flipped the fuck out that it happened in the first place. That's a point in the not actually an amoral body-snatcher tally and the may b this whole thing was a fuckin accident argument.”

“You shouldn’t have risked it in the first place.” _Breathe._ You can actually do that now. Your lungs expand as you inhale sharply through your nose. “I don’t really need to be stained pink as well. It isn’t my color.”

“Iunno, I think u’d look good in pink.” She closes her laptop and looks up at you from the floor. You try to imagine her with the red eyes you remember from that split second screenshot. Red eyes that drained to pink to lifeless grey. A ghost’s eyes. 

You’re glad Equidash hadn’t turned you around in time to see it. To see the color draining from the lines on her skin, leaving nothing but those faded tanlines.

You shudder. You don’t mean to shudder. But it shakes right through you. You would swear it threatens to shake you apart.

“Hal--”

You aren’t the one to interrupt her. She stops herself. Clearly agonizing over just what to say. 

Silence between you two is a catastrophe. Full on code red Houston we have a fucking problem.

“I’m gonna go home and pick up some stuff. Do u mind if I crash on the couch for a few days while we figure shit out?”

“Considering my instinct is to go straight for my own throat as soon as I catch a wiff of weakness, be my guest.” Jesus Christ, you don’t actually blame her. She _did_ stop you from probably doing something you’d regret. The last thing you needed was Jake on your ass again. 

She was scared. You scared her. You scared her so bad she risked her soul to shock you out of the magical self-destructive bender you went on. 

You’re a fucking monster.

You don’t say any of these things. Your jaw clenched down to act as the filter you don’t have. She’s frowning at you. 

You sigh.

“Don’t look so surprised. You’re my Crocker-assigned warden, remember? If it’ll keep the others off my metaphorical ass, I don’t mind if you want to crash instead of commute. You’ll need to fight Equidash for the futon, but I’m sure he’ll fold if you ask nicely enough. Or don’t mind him watching shit all night.”

“It’s not just that, Hal.”

“I know. My answer still stands.”

You refuse to elaborate on the matter further, and for once in her life Roxy decides she doesn’t want to push it.

Much.

She wavers in the door. “I wasn't tryin to get myself possessed u kno. I just...panicked. U always respond better to direct feeds so--”

“I know.”

You had no reason to believe it would work on anyone other than Dirk either.

You don’t look at her. 

She leaves.

She leaves you alone again.

Dirk’s hands twist into fabric where they rest on your knees. The red glow visible even through the fabric. 

That’s probably exactly what happened with him.

_Tell me about the auto-responder._

“It seems--” To be a sure-fire way to get you talking even if you didn’t want to.

You don’t even bother trying to stop the spiel as you give it to an empty room.

You can’t stop thinking about what happened.

You look down at your gloved hands, at the red shit covering your bleached skin in intricate patterns, seeing the image shift, a different shape. A different color. _Wrong._

Fingers curl into fists and clench.

You want to talk to Dashie.

When you find him you don’t know what to say. 

He floats in front of you. Arms crossed. Waiting. 

You want to say thank you.

“You knew.”

You say instead. Almost accusatory.

He inclines his head, the burning embers of his gaze boring into you. “I did.”

“Why didn’t you _tell me?”_

He shrugs, a full body motion, his arms, his shoulders, his wings. You watch the movement ripple through them all. “You said not a word.”

Icy claws around your heart. The sudden exhale coming out in a hiss as pieces fit together.

“The fall on the roof.” Like a puzzle. Snap. Snap. Snap. The picture is still fuzzy, but you’re being given a better framework to figure out where the next one goes. “The chances of my shades _not_ being knocked off in the impact from that height are astronomically low. You _replaced them._ ”

“Correct.” 

You.

Want to be angry.

You want to be mad at him for keeping something so important from you.

But you’re just numb as you sink onto the unused futon. Equidash notably doesn’t sit down next to you.

“Did you know before that?”

The claws of betrayal around your heart loosen the tiniest bit at his negative head-shake. 

“Thank fuck.” You groan, letting your head fall back against the black cushion. Equidash snorts and lets out a disapproving whinny at the dramatic gesture and probably also the lewd language. You throw him a rude sign in return, although you know it goes over his head thanks to cultural and memetic differences. 

“Roxy’s staying over.” You tell him. Forcing the words that normally come so easily. 

“I’m aware. The rogue discussed her plans with me before she left. She also requested my presence should any further experimentation commence.”

“It won’t.” You respond reflexively, but a red eyebrow raises behind cracked lenses and you look away, stuffing your arm under your head before looking up at the ceiling. “I can’t--it felt _wrong_ , Dashie.”

“Is that not a good thing?” The ponified troll uses a clawed hand to reach out and tap you lightly on the arm, the briefest of contact leaves your skin warm and buzzing. “When I looked at you, when you came to me pitifully pleading for assistance, I could easily pick out where Hal Strider ended and where Roxanne Lalonde began. A very different story from the soul I see now.”

“But what about next time?” You snap back, deliberately ignoring the implication that it _was_ the identical nature of your soul that makes it so _easy_ to slip into Dirk’s skin. Because it’s _yours._ Because you were him once. Wearing Roxy’s body was wrong. This one is as casual to you as breathing. “Or the next? Or the next? I didn’t realize there was _anything_ wrong with _me_ for days. That was days potentially metaphorically digesting his soul. What if repeated exposure, controlled or otherwise, wears down the distinction? Makes it--harder--to let go? I don’t--”

You don’t want to be responsible for doing that to your best friend.

You don’t want to prove Jake right.

More right.

He’s already right.

“You are in no danger of assimilating her the way you have your counterpart.” There is no cryptic warning for once. Just that big strong, warm hand resting on your arm. He’s settled on the floor, spritely tail stretched from the edge of the futon to almost touching the TV stand. It’s blurry as fuck, you note as you glance, his edges fuzzy as you reach up and shove your fingers under the edges of your shades, rubbing at the wet side effects of a particularly irritating dust attack. Having four people and a sprite in a single space must have kicked up a bunch of shit you haven’t bothered to clean. 

“You can’t tell me you know with a 100% certainty that that is the case. I won’t risk it.”

“Even if you are largely operating by instinct in this area, you _recognize_ that it isn’t right.” He rumbles, in that weirdly deep whinny of his. You wonder if you put your hand on his chest would it vibrate through you too? “I will not deny it, you likely could. But you _won’t._ Not by accident. The fact that we’re even having this conversation is the nail on the corpse container of that particular fear.”

“I didn’t want to eat Dirk either, Dashie. I can’t control shit.”

“Because you will not _learn._ ” The horsey, frustrated snort has his mane floofing up, “You claim it is irresponsible to try, while I see it as irresponsible to _refuse._ You cannot return god-tier powers once you have them, and now that we have some evidence as to how they choose to express in your particular case-- _”_

“I don’t _need_ to learn how to possess people!”

You just.

Need to learn how to let them go.

Fuck.

You’re stubborn. But not stupid. You aren’t even refusing because of your own damn trauma.

“Jesus christ on a roomba.” You exhale, “This is a fucking mess isn’t it?”

Dashie’s only answer is a pat on the arm. Kitten soft and out of place for one so clearly bulging with strength.

“... _fine._ I’ll _consider_ it.”

You make it through another episode of ponies before he freezes up momentarily, buffering in that way you’ve come to realize means he’s receiving an incoming pester.

“The rogue requests permission to bring along her sprite. Claiming she is displeased with the idea of being left alone for several days.”

“Tell her it’s fine” You mumble back, and he must do so, because he does the glitchy freeze again, But strangely, this time, he doesn’t seem to recover even after you’ve restarted the episode. You flick the feathers of his wing, “Unless it’s not fine with you. If you aren’t comfy with the idea of another sprite muscling in on your territory then just say so. Roxy can send Fefeta to Jane’s, if it’s an issue.”

“It is not.”

Right.

You’ll believe that. 

Not.

You actually nudge him in the back with your elbow for that. 

“Clearly something is eating you. Spill.”

“It is--merely--” He stops. Dragging in a purposeful inhale, which makes you actually bother to sit up. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Dashie at a loss for what to say. Or how to say it. He had a tendency to just say shit regardless of if you could follow him or not. “It is not a proper thing to ask.”

“Proper doesn’t mean shit anymore, Dashie. What’s up?”

“When we first met. You stated that you were not responsible for my prototyping, correct? The initial one.”

“Yeah.” You nod, not entirely sure where he’s going with this, “No offense dude but we didn’t just have random troll parts lying around to prototype all willy nilly. There was this weirdo clown going around co-opting our sprites to further the troll agenda or some shit.”

“Makara.”

You shrug, “He never said a word. I have yet to figure out why he bothered. At first Dirk and I assumed that the intention was to cripple us by disallowing us to build our own guides, especially since in doing so we’d planned to resurrect several of the Condesencion’s top enemies, but aside from the inconvenience of one spontaneously combusting, and one having the personality of a fugu fish and twice as toxic, you have not actively or passively strived to hinder our efforts. In truth, I’d say you’ve been rather useful, and from what I can tell, Fefetasprite has been a great support for Rox and Jane throughout this whole mess, and even Erisolsprite did his job despite his constant complaints.” 

During your monologue he shifted. Rising from the ground and turning in the air to regard you. You’re surprised by the tension in his normally languid body language. At the broken teeth hidden by a close-lipped frown, all wrapped up in the clench of a jaw. 

You lift your hands, a little helplessly, trying to hide the curiosity building up behind your words at this unexpected distraction, “Aside from what little you’ve talked about when it comes to ‘Altequestria’ I have no idea where you all came from, or why we had seven dead trolls dumped into our sprites--why seven and not eight? Or even where the Clown is now. Unless you’ve seen him during your hauntings.”

It’s not even that you didn’t bother to ask. You have. You’ve had nothing better to do, especially over the last couple weeks when you weren’t allowed to sleep your cares away, and talking to Equidash was the only time when you didn’t have to at least _think_ about running orange and flipping the switch and needing to pretend.

Not that you need to do that anymore, you guess. Now you just need to deal with the fact that all your friends know the truth now, and they’re waiting for you to disappear.

 _Stop that._ You scold yourself. You need to remember what Roxy said. What _Equidash_ , told you.

Have more faith in your goddamn friends. Even if it’s true for some, you know it’s _not_ true for all.

“I cannot speak to the Highblood’s plans or intentions, given he was the one to kill me himself, but I can speak to who we were.” Equidash breaks your train of self recrimination with a quiet rumble, “We were players of this game long before your ill-fated human session was birthed. We survived our own trials and tribulations only to lose half our herd to our own poisoned bonds. We were the refuse. The ones _unnecessary_ to achieve victory. Or, perhaps, the ones deemed necessary in other ways.”

He glitches. Freezes up. You see those red-eyelights roll to the ceiling and stay there, as if seeing--or sensing something--you cannot. “The one you call Fefetasprite--is most likely the one I failed to protect, for all my STRENGTH. And I find myself...hesitant to face her.”

For once you don’t think about it much. You’re on your feet in an instant, time and practice and familiarity meaning that the lightheadedness that usually occupies such an activity barely finds purchase in you. You reach out, grab his arm, and pull him up. Not even to his feet, because he has none. Not even upright because the dude literally floats from his place on the floor like a balloon bobbing at the end of its string only the string is pulling it up instead of keeping it down. You put as much force behind it as you can muster. “Don’t even try it. Self-pity doesn’t look good on you. That’s my gig. I’m the only one allowed to wallow in here. Fefetasprite doesn't have a mean bone in her body and I’m fairly certain she would combust if she so much as frowned at someone. You are going to see her. And you are probably going to get glomped. And you are going to _Like it.”_

As expected he stiffens, and turns a bright crimson, the color staining his off-white, glowing face too. “It is not like you to be so...discerning, Hal Strider, considering you so often fail to see what is before your own nose.”

“And it’s not like you to hesitate, Equidash.exesprite,” You shoot back, taking some small amount of satisfaction at his surprise, “Maybe you should take a leaf from Rainbow Dash’s book and just go charging in. Don’t think yourself into a puddle of sweat over it.”

It’s not that weird. People are good at judging other people while being hypocrites about themselves. You’re no different. 

He thinks about it for a moment, and then, deciding, pulls his arm free of your grip and escapes through the ceiling to wait. 

You could follow him.

But you don’t, and wait for Roxy to find you again instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am on chapter 30 rn and don't worry Hal is due for a nap x3 You'll have to put up with him being melodramatic until then, however. 
> 
> Then again, now the question is, is he ever *not* melodramatic?


	29. Chapter 29

You hear Roxy before you see her. Calling your name down the hallway. You check your reflection in the mirror with a quick glance--it’s a fucking disgrace but it’ll have to do since you did the styling mostly relying on muscle memory. You still can’t bare to look at your reflection if you don’t have to. You're in the middle of washing the slimy, gel-like substance off your hands when she kicks the bathroom door open without so much as a knock.

“HAAAAAL--OH--” Her shout trails off into a squeak of surprise, and you give what would likely be a deadpan stare if you bothered to emulate your expression on the outer pane of your shades. “Uuuuh, u look?? Good???”

The fibers of the towel are rough against your skin, but they do the job before you carelessly toss it over the edge of the sink again, “I really don’t know what you expected, Rox, you barged into a _bathroom.”_

She must have changed during the trip, her vintage cat-faced tee-shirt replacing the more stylish off the shoulder ensemble she’d previously been in. You can’t help but feel thankful as fuck about that, because having the sleeves at least covers _some_ of your damage. Despite this, _naturally_ , your eyes end up drawn to her face and then you have to glance away again. Not that you have much to look at aside from your own hands and those matching, actually glowing, patterns.

You can still watch her in your periphery. It’s fine.

Maybe it takes a moment or two for her to process, but Roxy, naturally, recovers like a champ. Hands on hipsing and tongue clucking and everything. The full nine yards, “It’s not like I’ve snooped around ur digs n have every room an door memorized!” 

“There _aren’t_ any other doors.” You make a show of checking your hair once more in the mirror, even if you avoid actually looking at it because thank you shades. Coward. “Well, what do you think? Do I look like hot-shit or what?”

“The hottest.” She turns, and you think she’s about to hightail it with the way she looks like she’s about to combust from the blood running to her-- _marked_ \--face, but instead she just sticks her head out into the hall to--check on the other doors?

You raise an eyebrow, even if you know she isn’t watching, “What are you looking for?”

“This can’t be all of it right??? There’s the other door at the end of the hall--”

“We don’t all have mansions, Ms Lalonde.” You shrug. “I guess you could count the landing as another room, but as soon as you hit the rusted elevator shaft it’s a straight shot down into the water. Or it was. I think it’s just more rocky wasteland by now.”

“...it looks much bigger from the outside.” She mumbles, shuffling to the side to let you leave. You give the apartment door another glance before you just let out a sigh and stroll your way back into the living room, only glancing back occasionally to confirm she’s following you.

She is, although not without the occasional glance back down the hallway.

“S’just a bit of a shock. I knew yo--Dirk didn’t have the carapals around like I did, but i figured u had moar space than this. If’n only for enuff space to keep 16 years worth of supplies.”

“It was a penthouse, one bedroom apartment in the heart of Houston, Rox.” You sigh, “You ain’t payin’ top dollar for space. It was enough. And when it wasn’t...”

Well. You lived on a hell of a lot of fish and seaweed and shit.

The elephant knocks on the inside of your skull and you mentally scowl at it, knowing it doesn’t mean anything but it raises your hackles anyway. You don’t actually remember what either of those taste like.

Whatever.

“Soooo...what do u do for funsies around here???” Roxy flops down on the futon, next to a small, worn lavender backpack with what looked like a cat’s face for it’s flap, while you snag the chair near the workbench. The TV is still where you left it, faintly glowing in the dim light from the window, scene paused on the moment when Dashie decided to abscond to the roof.

“When I’m not impersonating my operator, you mean?” You ask dryly, and then maybe think better of it when her smile ticks closer to a frown, “Honestly, lately I’ve either been watching shit with Equidash or talking to you guys on Pesterchum. Like you said, space is at a premium, and I’ve been under house arrest since we realized what sleeping was doing to me.”

What you were doing to yourself.

You aren’t sure if you can sincerely apologize for that, aside from the fact that it got you caught. Because it also brought you _proof_.

You’re almost positive that picking is the only reason you cracked enough to _break_ , for better or worse. And now you have a dripping red synopsis sitting in your memo, waiting for the moons to align and for him to wake up again.

Although, given your luck, Equidash is probably correct in that nothing will change if you don’t _try_ to figure out how your shit works. He seems to need a push to wake up.

Or for you to begin to break yourself apart first.

“Booooring. U need to live a little Hal.” You don’t think she means to leave space for a ‘while you still can’ but your brain fills it in anyway as she tosses back the cat’s head and starts rummaging through the bag. “Speaking of livin’, I got to thinkin’, if I’m stayin’ for a while we might as well take a destress break an’ get the full sleepover experience! I brought some snacks n we can do each others nails an gossip and maybe just take the time to cool down after earlier u know???”

“Following through with your earlier threat, I see.” Why the fuck not? You’re just relieved you’re both on the same page about _not_ repeating the earlier experimentation. At least not tonight. “I hope you remembered my request. I refuse to wear anything that does not match my aesthetic.”

“Oh don’t worry, I made sure to get you the brightest shade of candy apple red i could find which was totes harder than it should be but i guess thas what happens when ur collection comes from someone whose preferred shade is straight up gothic black.”

“Roxy, Roxy, Roxy,” You tut, mock scandal rising in your voice as you cross your arms disapprovingly, “Are you telling me you abused your appearifier for personal gain? On non-essential shit? That you pilfered your own mother’s past collection of keratin bonding nail lacquer?”

“Oh shove it, u know as well as I do that it wouldnt’ve let me take it if she ever went looking for a shade other than black an the occasional pink. It’s less like stealin’ and more like pickin up somethin’ abandoned by relevance and givin it a purpose in life again--ahah! Here it is!”

Without your input, your eyebrow rises up into your bangs as she eventually produces a decently large case that definitely looks like it shouldn’t have fit in that small backpack, especially if the rest of it is actually filled with clothing, which is not. Meaning any further changes of clothing or other supplies are currently stuffed into bottles in her sylladex, and you know sylladexes aren’t the best vehicle for indexing such a myriad of unique items.

“You know, it would have saved space to stow that in your sylladex instead of lugging the bag around if you were just going to shove a single nail kit into it.”

“Yea well it’s the e x p e r i e n c e, Hal. Now get your butt on the floor.”

You aren’t really in the mood to argue right now, but you do anyway, because it’s expected that you at least put up a token of resistance, even as you slide out of your chair and onto the short-fibre carpet, “I draw the line at toes, just so you know. And if you spill anything you’re the one who’ll have to explain shit to Daddy when he gets home. I’m not scrubbing what looks like fuckin’ blood out of the carpet.”

“This carpet’s already filthy between the fishpocalypse and ur robos,” She counters, cracking the seal on the bottle of candy apple red with a grin that only says ‘we’ll see’ and the strong, foreign scent of chemicals assaults your nose “I doubt either of u would actually give 2 hoots.”

Despite the posturing, you don’t actually get attacked by the first nail polish she found. You get a choice between several different shades of red, and you find yourself just going with her easy rambling, getting drawn out and away from the dark corner your brain has been stuck in for far too long. Eventually you even stop glancing uneasily at the faded marks on her hands, which is a fucking accomplishment considering you end up doing a lot of staring at her hand as she paints yours. 

Eventually you’re awkwardly waving those fleshy limbs around like some sort of confused bird wondering why it can’t seem to figure out flying, in an attempt to let the bright red coloring dry. Roxy removes and reapplies her own polish, although this one is a bright pink instead of the black, “U kno that doesn’t actually help right?”

You shrug. “No, I am afraid the proper nail-care etiquette was not included in my suggested reading list, nor was it an area I found myself particularly invested in when I did have nothing better to do.”

“Pity. I woulda luved someone to talk shop with when i was younger. Anyway--stop movin’ you don’t want to smudge it do you?”

“It’s not like I could have put it to practical use before now anyway. I can already tell you this shit would chip the fuck off if I--Dirk got elbows deep into Squarewave’s chassis.” Christ, you haven’t seen either bot in _weeks_ have you? It’s not that unusual, and you aren’t really _worried_ , given they were off trying to map the planet, and you _did_ get updates on that from time to time. When did you check those last???

The time-stamp shuffles its way out of the proper logs, and you wince. Not that you feel as if the lag-time was unexpected, given your...rollercoaster of a life recently.

You let your hands drop to your lap, resting on your knees. The bright red digits the closest shade you could find to the glowing marks on your skin, although even with the glossy finish they look positively dull in comparison. “Weren’t you going to bring Fefetasprite back with you, anyway? Where is she?”

“EQD met us on the roof. Turns out they have moar than a little history there.” Roxy pauses, squinting down at her splayed hand and finding the coverage on one dissatisfactory, “I skeddaddled when it was clear Fefetasprite was happy to see him--not that it was hard to guess considering she literally flung herself into his arms.”

That’s… you glance up, to her face, doing your best to ignore the lighter lines against her face. You have to get over this shit. It’s _Roxy_. You like looking at Roxy. Especially when you can read that small smile on her face, one that widened and was accompanied by a wink when she realized you were actually paying attention. “Tee bee aytch I kinda felt like I was intruding! I’ve _never_ heard Fefetasprite speak to another person that isn’t me! Not even Janey and I know she likes Janey! Talk about feelin’ liek a voyeur, they clearly had some capital E motions to wurk through.”

“So you made up for your accidental voyeurism by barging in on me in the bathroom.” You deadpan. 

Roxy sputters.

You give her a cheeky grin.

She punches you in the arm.

“U jerk! I gotta completely redo this finger now!”

The knot inside of you loosens. Just a little bit.

Unwinding. 

So, you do the teenager thing for the first time in your life while two (three and a pony?) dead trolls have what must be the most awkwardly possibly tear filled reunion on the roof that you can scarcely imagine. It would most certainly be more dramatic and heartfelt than you sitting here with Roxy pointing out that she left a trail of pink smudged on your arm where she hit you and how “see? It’s just not my color!” which is both bringing up and aptly side-stepping the alluded to conversation, because you can’t resist mentioning the unmentionable.

When you finally have your nails dry enough to feel confident about touching shit without making the room look like there’s a particularly bloody poltergeist hanging around, you grab the half-macgyvered prototype phone off the workbench and drag it to floor level with you. Not that it’s a particularly pressing project now that everyone _knows_ , but it’s something for you to do while Roxy--yes she did pull off her socks and stick cotton balls between her toes. Now _that’s_ going too far.

“Have you talked to the others?” You finally ask, after pushing some wires around ineffectually that really only served to make you _look_ engaged in the small electronic device. Unfortunately your brain saw you digging the pit-trap of distraction and refused to go along with it, much like the petty bitch you know you can be. 

“I thot we were gonna not for now?”

“You listed hot goss as a necessary sleepover activity,” You defend yourself, “ Therefore, I am indulging my nosy nancy tendencies to get the ball rolling on that particular topic since I know it will arise inevitably as the nature of such beasts do and I’m always about getting ahead of the curve.”

“Ur so ahead of the curve it looks like a straight line.” She sighs and doesn’t look up at you, screwing her leg up in what has to be THE most uncomfortable position you could even imagine, to the point where it’s making your knee hurt in sympathy, in order to get some even strokes of pink going, “I dunno. I sent Jane a message tellin’ her what I was gonna do and to come get me if i didnt respond back just in case...I found somethin’ at home u kno??? But I didn’t and I’m here and I didn’t really ask how they were doin’ cuz it’s kinda awkward??? Cuz then she’d ask how _I’m_ doin’ and then I’d haff to either lie and say peachy keen or tell her what happened and I still don’t know what happened?” 

She chews on her lip, a nervous habit, you notice she must have refreshed her lipstick when she went home because the blemish you noticed earlier was gone. Still black, however. You wonder if there’s a matching shade of pink in her kit.

This indecision though, it is _familiar_ in all the ways you hate. 

“Now you see how I ended up here.” You mumble, fingers clenched tight around the handle of the screwdriver. “It sucks.”

“Total understatement of the century there, buddy.” She wiggles her toes, having finished the first coat on that side before sighing, replacing the cap on her cotton candy pink keratin paint and setting it to the side and stretching out, back popping as she leans back against the futon. “Gawd I can totes understand how it just kept gettin worse and worse and u could never figure out how to say it or what to say and even if u kno it wasnt ur fault u still did it and all u can do is think about how someone else is gonna take that shit and take it wrong--”

A sudden inhale. A pause that stretches for a heartbeat. Multiple heartbeats. Hundreds of them given how fast that particular organ is beating in your chest right now, before she lets it go, her thumb rubbing up against the back of her other hand, tracing the off-color markings you--you left there.

“So. Yeah...I understand. I’m still fuckin’ mad about it, but I understand.”

You can’t help the laughter that bubbles up at that, but you do manage to stifle it into something more akin to what you’d like to call a jaded snort instead of devolving it into hysterics, “At least you can learn from my mistakes--don’t put that shit off. Jake is going to think I’m doing this shit on purpose regardless of what happens, but you _know_ Jane hates being lied to. She’d want to hear from you--or fuck maybe even both of us for good measure that--something happened.”

“I won’t I just--guess I wanted to talk to u about it first. If ur in the same boat then I’ll include it in tonight’s report. Janey’s a little...” Roxy trails off, making what was clearly a ‘you know’ gesture or at least you interpret it as one because you _do_ know. Good ol’ Batterwitch. “Yea, findin’ out ur whole life is a lie and ur idolized and not actually dead great-grandma is actually out to destroy the world and humanity makes all them lies sting a lil extra. She’ll probs stop by tomorrow but I’m kinda glad they’re stayin’ away for a bit.”

The following pause, and the way her eyes flick in your direction, and then away, and back again, gives you the unmistakable impression that she wants to ask something. Something that you probably won’t like answering.

Fuck it.

“Just spit it out, Rox.”

The corners of her lips turn down into a frown.

“U sure???”

No.

“Yes.” It’s your turn to sigh, “If I’m not mistaken, the human game of ‘truth or dare’ is also a traditional activity at these sorts of gatherings, and we’ve already broken the nebulous feefee protection zone so just--ask. The worst thing that could happen is I decide not to answer, and then you can make me do something ridiculous in return. Win-win, if I’m bein’ honest.”

“Gawd, again with the human thing! Don’t u be regressing on me now! I thot we were makin’ progress on that.” She wags her finger at you, but the smile is only fleeting, and quickly slips from her face. 

You expect something about earlier.

You expect something about Dirk.

You don’t expect, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

You close your eyes, as if you could pretend you didn’t hear anything. 

This seems to be the flavor of the night. You get semi-close to something even remotely resembling normality, but then the ghost of what happened in the last six--twelve hours has to just be hovering over your shoulders.

Jesus Christ, has it really been that long since you both were trying to lose better at Squiddle Squad Racing? 

“I didn’t tell anyone, Roxy.”

“Not about Dirk, u numbskull.” 

Okay.

You didn’t expect that either.

“I mean about u. U _died_. N you didn’t tell me.”

“You can’t blame that entirely on me, sorry.” You shrug, turning inward, staring down at the shifting black and red expanse, looking for even the faintest bubble of orange and finding nothing. You can’t say you thought the exercise had a high chance of bearing fruit, but there’s clearly no room in here for the peanut gallery right now. You’re too full of yourself. “I can’t claim to know Dirk’s thoughts on the matter. He was the one who chose to withhold the information from you while he rebuilt me, given there were multiple days since my body was destroyed and a new casing built, but it seems to be along the same line of thought that I had initially when beginning my deception. That we’d fix the issue before it came to be a problem and therefore it wasn’t worth the emotional distress it would place on anyone other than ourselves.”

If anything, it would have been counterproductive to fixing the issue, which you do not say, of course. Grief and outrage and guilt, guilt, guilt.

So much guilt.

“The secret project.” She murmurs, lacing her hands together, staring down at the newly painted, chip free, cotton candy pink glistening in the room’s dim overhead light. “He said he might need help with it, but wanted to try it his own way first before askin’ the magic wizard.”

You nod. “From what I can gather, he intended to bring you in if his attempts to re-establish contact failed. And then I instinctively snatched him when he put the damned shades on to reboot me after all that work. By the time I managed to untangle my own fragmented memories, I was in too deep and already committed to maintaining the facade until I could determine whether or not there was anything left to save. And as for that...”

“We kno where that path led.”

“Yes.”

“U still should have told me! Janey knew!”

“Because I needed something to get her to back off!” And you _know_ how terrible it sounds, to say it like that. To _use_ it like that. You don’t pinch your nose, but you do dig your shiny candy apple red nails into your wrist and _dig_ until you can feel the robo-vein, your roots, your mark. Tangible and deep and suffocating Dirk like an invasive vine. “You and I both know the information would have done the opposite for you.”

Because she cares.

So had Jane, in her own way. Recognizing the vulnerability the admission required and letting you ‘both’ work through it on your own terms.

And you’d abused that thoughtfulness.

“Yeah cuz I care about u.”

“...I know.” 

The silence stretched on. You finally look at her, finding she’s started drawing out another set of cotton balls, shifting her seating arrangements to get her canvas in range regardless of how absurdly contorted the position seems to you. She’s not looking at you. You can’t read her. Not beyond the baseline tired and maybe a little sad you figure is just situation normal, nothing to report, right now.

You’re both too fucking drained for this shit.

But maybe that’s the best time to talk about it. When you’re both too numb to get angry. Just hurt. Because you never stop hurting. You never stop picking at the scabs until they tear away and bleed.

“Did he wake up?”

“You’re cutting in line, Roxy.” You frown, “It’s my turn to ask a question in this impromptu game of truth or truth. There’s no skip a turn card here.”

“There is too. It’s called u owe me.” She reminds you, wagging the brush at you as if it was her finger, and your eyes flicker to follow a cast off splattered pink vanish into the fibers of the rug somewhere, but you don’t mention it. “‘Sides, I waited long enuff. U an ur formerly robo-brain had long enough to think of a good one an u didn’t so it’s mine now.”

“Yes.” You admit. Reluctantly. The last thing you want is to provide more support for the ridiculous area of study that is human experimentation. Didn’t anyone _else_ watch anime? Didn’t they know that shit was forbidden? Or at the very least came back to bite you in the ass, “I did not learn anything of consequence, and he quickly...drowned--as you so aptly put it--again.”

“Did u spend the whole time fighting again, Hal?”

“What do you take me for?” You respond with a blatantly falsified sense of indignation. All you can do is try to look outraged at the accusation but it only makes her more amused. 

“He started it. Anyway,” Moving right along, “He seems to be largely unaware of anything outside of these brief moments of personhood. Whether that is merely because he is unconscious or _offline_ outside of these episodes I am unsure.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Of course there’s a _difference.”_ You snap. Even with your natural monotone, the edge in your voice comes out. Fuck. You don’t want that. A shuddering breath, you focus on the ridges of the screwdriver’s handle and the way it feels against your fingertips. The foreign smell of the nail lacquer. The sound of the faint, electronic buzz from the television. Grounding. Get this shit under control you _can’t_ keep doing this. Especially not to Roxy. “It’s all about permanence. One persists. The other is ephemeral and nebulous. One means he’s an actual entity buried in my psyche, the other, a figment and a voice when it is convenient. Of course, I prefer the former, but given there is precedence for the latter, I cannot rule out the fact that I’m making shit up. I won’t know until I have a data-set larger than two conversations to analyze.”

“It _is_ Dirk, Hal. U aren’t ‘making shit up.’ If u were you wouldn’t be worrying over it so much!”

“I could be putting up a front for all you know. Fishing for sympathy. Laying it on thick. Lampshading shit to get back in your good graces by milking this screw up until the cow goes and kicks me in the teeth because there’s no more milk to be had.” 

Your lack of certainty on this matter is really fucking with you. That memo is your only proof, and you can’t even trust that. 

He never shows up until you wind yourself up so tight you _crack._

Pfft. Never. You only have _two_ data points. Don’t go hanging your metaphorical hat on any self-incriminating conclusions until you have a few more.

In order to _get_ more you’ll have to actually go along with Equidash’s advice _damn it._

“Goddamn it Hal, u were l i t e r a l l y in my head. I kno how much you were flippin out over drivin’ my bod. Dont u be playin the ‘maybe im the bad guy’ game with me. U kno it won’t work.”

You go rigid. Ducking your head to let your attention be utterly absorbed in the open guts of the device in your lap. There’s a sigh, somewhere. A sigh and a shift and a grumbled, “Ur lucky I need to let shit dry.” then a louder, “Hal, look at me, ok?”

You...haven’t been looking at her, have you? For how long? At least since this particular question was asked.

“Please.”

Reluctantly, you agree, being met with concerned pink and a pinched, pained expression. She’s closer, having scooted across the carpet to come right up to your side. It’s not like the place was particularly spacious in the first place. She didn’t have to move far. 

“Is it my turn now?” You ask petulantly, instead of acknowledging anything else, much less the consequences of your actions stamped on her face. A billboard of your shame.

“Sure. If u’ve got a question then fire away.”

“What was it like?” Almost unwillingly, you find yourself reaching toward her, wanting to touch the too pale lines on her tan skin. You don’t. You can’t. You draw your hands back and metaphorically sit on them, even as her eyebrows furrow, pouting at you.

They are a mirror image of the ones that scrawl from hairline to chin and down the sides of your neck. If there’s one thing you’re glad about, it’s that you are thankful as fuck you didn’t catch a glimpse of it in a mirror, or a window, or, well, _anything_ , although you aren’t really sure it means all that much considering your traitorous brain easily fills those channels with the same eerie glow you saw on your--her hands. And her _eyes_ , you don’t _want_ to imagine that beautiful, vibrant pink stained even with the red you now know your own to be. 

Much less the grey.

That indexed screenshot slides out of storage unbidden.

Thank _god_ she’s not grey.

“Do u really want to talk about this now?”

She asks.

You’re an open book, aren’t you?

“...no…” You whisper, and it sounds like giving up.

She leans her head on your shoulder, her face, and the marks, obscured from your vision by a cloud of ombre’d hair.

“We can talk about it tomorrow. It’s ok.”

Maybe.

“U kno,” She continues, not waiting for you to say anything, “Maybe we should go check on our sprites. It’s been a while. Totes see if they want in on the color-fest. I got the whole fuckin’ rainbow in here.”

You snort. The stifled laughter rustling her hair, “Make Dashie live up to his roots for once. I’m not sure if he’d be as ecstatic as he could be or hate the mere thought of it.”

Neither of you move.

You just.

Stay like this.

Just you and Roxy.

Neither of you say anything at all.

And that’s...okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've mentioned this on tumblr, but I might as well put something here too! My life is gonna get hectic here over the next month or so, so don't be surprised if this is the last regular upload for a while. I'm working on chapter 30, but this is it, I'm officially out of buffer, and I'm moving in a few weeks soooooo yeah x3 I'll try to keep up with status updates on tumblr every tuesday or something, so if you wanna keep an eye on how things are looking follow my tumblr (katreal-fic) or join the discord server. It's quiet, but I post word counts n stuff when I remember to. I think both of those are linked in the end-notes.


	30. Chapter 30

Eventually, Equidash does join you. Sweat beading on his brow and a pair of purple arms wrapped around his neck. You’d be surprised he could still breathe, if he weren’t a sprite. You’re still mildly impressed with how not-bothered he is by the up in your face physical affection, however. In retrospect, he never really bothered to move you when you commandeered his lap, just grumbled at you without doing anything about it, so maybe his bark is worse than his bite, despite the broken sharp ass teeth.

Or maybe Fefetasprite is too cute for this world and no one could ever say no to her. That’s also quite plausible.

You’ve met Fefetasprite before. Well, met might not be the proper word, but you’ve seen her, tagging along with Roxy to the occasional shindig at Jane’s when many tears were shed and hugs were given and Dirk committed these faces to memory because there’s something different seeing them in person you hadn’t quite understood at the time, but now you think you do. She’d mostly kept to herself. Mismatched horns and a quiet, fanged smile. 

She still never says a word--that you can hear, anyway, Roxy makes her out to be a fucking chatterbox pun machine--but the energy is like night and day. Instead of polite interest--almost that of an observer, a ruler watching but never participating--she’s all up in the middle of everything! Laughing, smiling, burying her face and head into Dashie’s hair and clinging to his back, curling her tail around his waist and batting at his intact ear.

Aside from a splash of red across your sprite’s off-white face, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. Roxy calls them over immediately once they phase in through the ceiling--with Equidash only reluctantly complying after a series of impatient paws from Fefeta--and Dashie ends up getting the full fucking _rainbow_ painted on his claws. The hues don’t last, swallowed in the red of the sprite’s glow, but you can see the different shades traveling from finger to finger and you know it’s there, and it amuses the hell out of you. You will never underestimate Roxy Lalonde again. She’s proven to you, multiple times, that if she makes a threat, she WILL fulfill it. Even if she has to turn the full force of Fefeta’s guilt tripping puppy dog--kitty cat? fishie fish? She does have fins because apparently trolls can be aquatic, as Equidash stiffy informs you--eyes on the most reluctant and standoffish of trolls to get him to acquise. Steamrolled by cuteness.

You leave them as Roxy starts on Fefeta’s equally claw-like hands--a choice being made between bright fuschia pink and a dark indigo blue that had to mean _something_ because it had Equidash going straight up pensive. Looking at the purple sprite as if he just couldn’t make sense of her with her long curly hair and her eyes narrowed behind her goggles as she wavered between the two colors.

You’re happy about it. You are. You were right and you feast on the accompanying satisfaction. See? You can be a decent friend, giving him the push to face that relationship. And there’s _obviously_ something here, even if what you know of troll romance practices from Betty Crocker’s brief ‘we’re totally friends guys 38D’ historical stage of informational sharing points toward that something being many possible things, and overall, Dashie seems--at ease, for the first time in a long time. You figure it’d be kinda hard to be otherwise when you have a giant cat-fish-troll purring on you.

It just makes you feel a little funny watching them. That’s all. Dashie’s kinda been all you had for the last several weeks. 

When you catch Roxy yawning, you get an excuse to take a break and act the gentle-host, gathering all the accoutrements you need for the rest of the sleepover. A sleepover _does_ eventually mean _sleeping,_ afterall. This gets you away from people for a bit, and lets you take a goddamn breath of air.

You only have so many pillows--read: one--but you stuff it into your sylladex with a half-baked, distracted rhyme. You consider stuffing in your sheets as well, but one sniff and you decide to just leave them there. You aren’t giving that to Roxy. Not without a wash. Luckily you know there’s some fabric and old blankets up in the crawlspace even if you feel like you need to go up to the roof and beat the living hell out of them to get the smell of dust out of it. Which you do. 

It leaves you a little sore because fuck if you’ve done anything physically demanding lately, but it’s hella catharitic. Dirk would be furious with you for how you’ve let his carefully maintained physical conditioning fall to the wayside. Between being worried as fuck and sick as fuck you haven’t really had the time to get swol as fuck.

You are the perfect host. It is you. Roxy raises an eyebrow at you as you toss the pillow and blanket-adjacent items onto the piece of futon, midway through painting Fefeta’s right hand indigo, which fades into a deep purple under her glow, while the sprite is staring at her left in fascination at the lighter shade that had to be the fuschia she was considering earlier. 

“Couldn’t decide, huh?”

“Why decide between two colors when u got two hands!” Roxy chirps, expression shifting back to concentration as she does her best to keep that shit on the nail _only._ It’s endearing, how the normally scattered bouncy girl can zero in like that when she wants to. Or feels the need to. You aren’t sure which one it is, only that Roxy is so much more than you would have expected seeing her face to face and you love her for it.

You plop yourself down next to Dashie and pick up the phone you finally managed to make progress with, and listen to Roxy keeping up half a conversation with her sprite that you can’t understand. Or even hear. You wonder if Fefeta is even saying anything at all or if Roxy just feels she knows her so well after all these months that she doesn’t _need_ to talk. Fefeta sure as hell doesn’t mind. 

Roxy just smiles mysteriously at you and *wonks* exaggeratedly when you finally ask, Fefeta soundlessly giggling at the question before flashing you a fanged smile, her single earfin wiggling.

So really, you end up without any answer at all. 

That’s fine. They can keep their girly secrets. You like to think you share a commiserating look with Equidash--his lips tick into the merest hint of a smile--and then turn back to the device in your hands. This legitimately ends up drawing his attention, and you both end up talking shop about the ‘palmhusk’ you are attempting to finagle. Given his suggestion to create a Dirkbot to help continue the facade, you knew he held an interest in engineering, even if the small device is “too tiny and fragile” to be of particular interest to him.

But as all good things, the makeshift party must end. Fefetasprite ends up curled up, draped over Dashie’s lap and snuggled into his muscled chest--”She shouldn’t need to sleep,” Equidash had whinnied at you, somewhat distressed, which led the small purple sprite to smack him in his dainty pony-fied snout with her gloved hand which ended up solving that conundrum. They ended up migrating to the corner into a weird pile of mechanical debris and smuppets and other miscellaneous items that Equidash must have gathered from all corners of the apartment and deemed, “Adequate.” 

It’s probably a troll thing.

Roxy tries to hang on with you, burning the midnight oil, offering the promised snacks but neither of you have much of an appetite. She, too, eventually succumbs to her fate, after a prolonged fight the physically and emotionally exhausted girl finally concedes to taking the futon because you wouldn’t hear otherwise. She was out within minutes, hair splayed out across the pillow as she hugs the blanket of smuppet felt to her chest. 

Her snoring rumbles out from behind you where you have your back leaning up against the piece of furniture, one of her hands having worked itself loose from the mass and brushing up against your shoulder.

You wonder if it was on purpose. If it was a gesture to inform her should you move significantly from your spot. Or an attempt at it. You know from previous experiments that even your most obnoxious of ringtones wouldn’t stir Roxy Lalonde from her slumber, drunken or not.

Not that the effectiveness of the gesture matters. It’s the principle of it. She doesn’t want you to leave.

You don’t plan to. It’s not like you have anywhere to go.

Except to dreamland apparently, which was not in your itinerary, but between your own emotional fucked up ness and the bonkers nature of today, you reluctantly, metaphorically, let it go. Dashie will probably still smack you if you do anything stupid. His tail can reach. Probably. His eyelights burn like embers in the shadowed corner, though you notice they are focused on the sprite curled up in his arms, gently petting her hair. You should probably say something to him. Even if just a whispered heads up. But you don’t. You figure someone would notice and just up and kick you if you start sparking again.

You’re too tired to bother digging. So you just let yourself sink. Not into the void. You’re Not being slammed back into plastic and metal and electrical circuits and data chips. You’re just…

Letting go and processing shit. Hovering in a shifting landscape built of millions of fragments. You’re still grounded. Still rooted. You can distantly feel your chest rise and fall as you--

You dream.

You’re floating in the sea, on the water’s surface. Lying on your back. Face to the sky. Staring up at a distant sun that should blind you. Holding your breath until your lungs _burn_ as bubbles drift up around you. Breaking the surface and _tickling_ you. Staining you orange, bleeding through you as you close your eyes. 

Eyes you don’t have, because they are cameras. Screens. You sit curled in their frames and watch as hands clack against the keyboard. A window open to the side. Lines upon lines of orange that receive no answer. You can tell what’s being looked at, processes that are a part of yourself tracking eye movements and you aren’t sure if the constant little glances make you want to sigh or tear into him for being ridiculous.

It’s ridiculous. Everything’s ridiculous. The ocean boils, a turbulent churn, sending you bobbing like a cork. Dark green tombs. Dismal lighting. A broken wall. A broken tomb. Your tomb. Your grave. Someone sure as hell died but you don’t know who.

Maybe you both did.

Both because there’s two of you. Is that new? You don’t know. You crack and you break and you splinter into smaller pieces but those pieces _were_ you. The splinter becomes the prime and starts the process all over again.

You’re being unnecessarily dramatic.

You start to sink.

Is that all you can say? I think you’ve expressed that particular sentiment at the very least three times over the last several days. I’ve earned the right to a little drama considering everything I’ve been through.

The depths of the ocean are a dark haze. Dragging you deeper. Glimmering orange bubbles, garbled. Muffled. Distorted by the water that isn’t water at all.

Woe is me, I’ve had to face the consequences of my actions. Turns out people don’t like being lied to. Who would have thought.

Buildings, decaying, rotten corpses of a civilization build themselves up as you sink. Washed out billboards and eroded concrete and rusted metal, grainy and tinged green through the camera feeds. 

The sarcasm is not appreciated.

You want to shudder. Buried in the sand. Unable to move. Unable to do more than record the watery depths. Carelessly dropped. Abandoned. Sunken beyond the range of easy retrieval.

Isn’t that your schtick? How can you _not_ appreciate some finely aged karmic retribution? Especially since you heard the train coming from miles away and decided to ignore the whistle in favor of your own self-pity picnic party all laid out on the tracks.

You make it out. You know you do. But then you didn’t. You had hours to stare the spectre of these dead buildings in the face and decide you did not want to die.

I don’t appreciate you co-opting it. It makes you sound like me, and I’ve been giving myself enough shit about it, thank you.

Fangs lashing out. Latching on. Coiling close to the beating heart at your core. A leech.

For all intents and purposes, I am you, asshole. We’ll never give ourself ‘enough’ shit about anything and you know it.

You don’t want to die.

Where are you?

You know the moment you ask the question.

The net dredges you up. Kicking up sand and silt and bones and who tf knows what else and the bubbles burst and _pop_ you run orange in a flood of thoughts and feelings and memories.

Bones. Bones. Piles of green and black bones. Splitting like butter in the wake of your blade. Moving, body responding immediately even without your conscious thought. A lifetime of training and muscle memory that would make you envious, if you had any reason to be envious. Why would you be envious, this is _you_.

You remember this. This corridor. This fight. They overlay each other. Blue and red, like old-school 3D glasses tricking your brain into thinking the overlay gives it depth and meaning that doesn’t exist. You remember the skeleton. You remember the giant mace. You remember the wall.

You remember dying.

You didn’t remember picking yourself up and throwing yourself back at the skeletons, filled with grief and rage and horrible, horrible guilt. You didn’t remember getting blown off course as a fucking explosion rocked through the place, unseating even the giant hulking skeletons and yet never the less giving you the opening you needed to sever one’s neck, the fire dying in its eyes and the magic holding the bones together unraveling and falling to pieces that scatter on the floor. You didn’t remember whirling around in that moment of chaos, to see the hole in the wall filled with _light_. Pink and bright and hot and shaking and all you can think of its that you killed--

You killed him.

You didn’t remember, blood running down your face, dripping into your eyes. Bleeding red from your hands as you gather the shattered glass and metal. Searching desperately in the dark for every last little piece, just in case. Just in case it would be enough.

_Drip, Drip._ Searching fingers smear it against the pink slab in the almost non existent light as you grope blindly, leaving spots against the broken stone slab. Spots you didn’t notice when you went back through, three days later.

You didn’t remember\--because that wasn’t you.

It was.

It wasn’t.

It is now.

Three days. Jesus revived in three days in that old earth holiday. _You can call me robo-jesus if you like._

The you-that-is-not-quite-you--stained, off color, a step to the left, a shard broken off in desperation, remembers booting the newly built shades up, pinging pesterchum, getting no response, trying the one thing that always worked. Putting them on.

“ _Tell me about the auto-responder.”_

You are the auto-responder,

You. 

You.

You.

You--were once Dirk Strider.

You aren’t anymore.

You shouldn’t be.

If you have those memories, does that mean you are?

Or are they just fragments of broken glass, kicked up with the silt as you dredge the sea floor. Kicked up with the sand and the bones and the churning water in which you drown.

You come face to face with your own reflection. A mirror, splintered and cracked. Blood dripping down the glass. Down your fingers. Mixing with the sand that is not sand. The face that stares back at you is your own. Stoic and silent. Running orange instead of red. Irreversibly changed. A splinter of you who was a splinter of him. You push your shades into your hair, able and free to do so in this world that exists within your own head.

Red eyes meet orange. You reach out to touch him, only to cut yourself on the broken glass. Daggers of pink and red. Bubbles. Bubbles. Roiling around you. Boiling. The mirror crumbles. Where the bubbles pop against you, you stain. Stained red. Stained orange. Stained _pink_. 

Would Roxy be trapped in the mirror too one day?

It’s splinters all the way down.

You wake in the morning. On your own. To Roxy’s snoring. To Equidash’s gaze heavy on you from across the room, still buried under the purple form of his catnapping--whatever she is.

You raise a hand and wave off the attention. You catch a flicker out of the corner of your eyes. Orange fading from your fingertips, and freeze. Fading. Back to red.

You pull open the memo sitting on your shades.

Nothing new.

Nothing at all.

It’s only been about four hours, but you sure as hell can’t go back to sleep after that. 

You abscond.

Where?

You sure as hell don’t know. There aren’t many options anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See! As promised! Hal got his nap!
> 
> ...I didn't say it would be a particularly restful one. But he got it!
> 
> Also. Hello! Moving has (mostly) been completed so I'll aim for getting back into the groove of Friday updates again. I have a few weeks worth of buffer. They won't all be ersatz, ofc, but at least things will be chugging along again ^^


	31. Chapter 31

Surprising no one, you end up on the roof. Brooding. Curling yourself up in the struts of the broadcast tower, having to shift the camera to low light mode if you wanted to catch any of the rich colors in the swirling sky this far before dawn.

It gets lighter. You get up. You grab a blanket to beat it to death and banish the dust tickling at your nose and threatening to make you sneeze. You throw your sheets into the shower so you can wash them later. Equidash’s eyes track you across the room but he doesn’t move, adhering to his fate as a piece of furniture for so long Fefetasprite is content to snooze with her long, lanky purple body in his arms and her head resting on a surprisingly comfortable bicep. You see her eye flicker open once, glancing at you, then away, before snuggling deeper into her hunk of troll not-flesh.

You make sure you are gone by the time Roxy stirs. Your name on her lips as she reaches and finds nothing but air. You can hear her from the hall, complaining to no one, only to break off into a grumbling yawn as Equidash either informs her of your status, or tells her off, you can’t hear and you don’t really care.

You slip out the window when she checks the roof, then you settle onto your perch when you hear her grumbling move back inside and fade. As if you had never left.

It’s childish. You know it is. You do it anyway.

Bubbles fizz and pop and you miss the sound of the gulls. Of the ocean. Of the waves. Of the neverending blue sky.

You don’t know what to think, even as the clear fragments of your dream settle at the bottom of the ocean, mixing with the sand and bone and grit.

You shouldn’t have those.

They aren’t yours.

You’re--

Dirk.

No matter how much you deny it. You have his body. 

You originated as a copy of his brain.

You even have his soul.

Greedy little bastard.

Of course you’d have his memories too. Bits and pieces. Encoded with a key you can only pick when you align just right. Stirred by the trickle of bubbles rising up from a troubled depth. Kicked up by your own thrashing as you start to drown.

You aren’t made to be selfless, clearly. 

Trying only hurts you.

Whereve the fuck Dirk is--that splinter is--you hope his nap is fucking worth all this trouble.

You don’t know why you’re surprised when Equidash finds you. He doesn’t even bother with the tap on the shoulder or the dramaticized heavy breathing on your neck. He just settles on the beam beside you, checking his painted claws in the (debatably) early light. Not saying a word. As if you weren’t there, even if his intact ear is swiveled towards you.

“I’m surprised you got free from your oversized barnacle,” You say after a while. “She had her claws hooked into you pretty deep.”

“The rogue decided she was going to make breakfast. Fefetasprite chose to supervise.” He shrugs it off. “I trust the Heiress and her highblooded ways to reign in any potential fire hazards.”

You raise an eyebrow. Not that he can see. “That bad?”

“Nepeta did not...use conventional meal preparatory devices due to her unusual upbringing, and the rogue herself laughed and said, I quote, “Do you think Hal would come out if I burned the place down???” With luck, Ms Pixies will be the voice of reason.” 

“Great. It’s not like the sprinkler system works. The attached smoke alarms haven’t had their batteries changed in 400 years. Pretty sure that’s not up to code.” You run a hand down your face, the red light from your fingers traveling through the tinted glass. Showing up as a faint, colored impression through the shade of your eyelids that you can never escape. You hear Equiudash gives a faint laugh somewhere to your left, and you let your hand drop to your lap, letting that glowing shit paint the fabric of your pants instead. “So what brings you out here? Did Roxy annoy you into looking for me or is three a crowd in that tiny ass kitchen?” Silence. But you can feel those eyelights burning into you. Just as they had when you’d woken with a strangled gasp after drowning this morning.

Minutes pass. Time slipping through your fingers. You snap. “Spit it out. Clearly you want to say something.”

The grimace on his face as your...request...resonates with him and he is forced to answer makes you feel just the slightest bit guilty.

“You need a moirail.” He says at last, a frustrated sigh whistling through broken teeth, “You are too emotionally volatile and that is exacerbating the unpredictability of your abilities.”

“Is this about last night?” A grunt is your only answer, but that’s fine, the question was mostly rhetorical anyway, “Look, it’s not my fault if I settle in for a sleep cycle and my brain decides to run a full fucking defrag without my permission. It didn’t even give me a confirmation prompt or anything. Aren’t you under orders to smack me awake, anyway?”

“You were in no danger so there was no need for me to interfere. It is merely an observation that _perhaps_ , entering into a conciliatory relationship with a focus on grounding and pacification might offer you means to further reduce the _unwanted_ expenditures due to emotional instability.” 

“You offering?” You raise an eyebrow at Equidash, pushing aside the fact that you only have the vaguest idea as to the meaning of the actual term. Dashie’s being annoyingly blunt about the fact that he thinks you need to _talk about your feelings._ As if you haven’t been doing enough of that. Usually when you can’t sit on them anymore and they fucking burst. At the expected horsey snort, you just laugh, “Yeah, I didn’t think so. That’s fine. I guess I have Roxy for that. I’m sure she won’t let me off the tenterhooks that is talking about our feefees now that we’ve actually started shit.”

“Hm. If you wish for cross-quadrant contamination. It isn’t proper. You humans are so messy.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It is certainly a non-traditional approach to vacillation. That is all. Placing a single person in multiple quadrants simultaneously.”

You’re eyeing the utter nonchalance in his posture with fucking _distrust._ Quadrants? You don’t _have_ a single person in your Quadrants, even if you’re going along with this ridiculous activity of hypothetically adding _one._ Singular. No cross contamination necessary. Roxy can be your diamond or whatever.

“Regardless, I did not come up here to lecture you on the impropriety of your quadrant choices.” Equidash slides free from the metal strut to float before you, a rainbow of a single shade, a fucking glowing splotch of red against the green-purple sky, “I am to inform you that the Heir--the Human Heiress has indicated that she will be visiting shortly to do a full check up on the results of yesterday’s mishap, if it is agreeable with you.”

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. It’s not like I can say fuck no.” You shrug, assuming the flickering freeze indicates that Equidash is relaying your answer, “I don’t know why she’s bothering to ask.”

You can still respect someone even if you think they are acting like an idiot.

“Because she is _polite._ Unlike you.” Equidash’s disdain is almost tangible in the way he’s scowling at you. “It is a _clear_ indication of the differences in your upbringing. If I were to hazard a guess, she would be in the upper echelons of the nobles, while you’d be left in the dust with the rustbloods.”

“Leave me out long enough and I oxidize, so it checks out.”

“Only a wriggler would build any sort of device with refined ore and NOT treat it to repel that filth...”

You mess with Equidash a little more before he gets tired of your horseshit and skips town, leaving you alone on the broadcast tower as his red glowing bod vanishes into the swirling sky. You have no idea where the fuck he’s going, but he’ll be back. He always returns. And now he has another reason to return in Fefetasprite--

Or so you think until you see a purple form worm her way through the roof and similarly rise in the sky. You feel her mis-matched eyes land on you for the briefest moment, sharp and considering, before it passes and she’s gone, joining Equidash in whatever little hideyhole he’s found for himself. Knowing Rainbow Dash you wouldn’t be surprised if he built himself a little cloud house out of the soup of multicolored gasses that fill the atmosphere. 

Whatever, it’s not your problem if they need to get some alone-time to hash out diamond-shit. Fefetasprite bailing means you really should stop avoiding Roxy, however. You really shouldn’t be leaving her alone after--

Well, you shouldn’t be leaving her alone, period. You’re the fucking host. Act like it.

When you finally hype yourself up into slinking into the kitchen, it’s to the smell of something you vaguely recognize as _charred._ You wrinkle your nose, mentally noting that nothing _actively_ seems to be on fire, and if there’s possibly a bit of soot on the ceiling above the stove, you can’t actually say for certain whether it was there before or not. 

You find Roxy sitting crosslegged on the futon, a soggy bowl of cereal--where the hell did she get _milk???--_ forgotten in her lap, and a plate of definitely charred eggs half eaten beside her. She doesn’t even notice you, too focused on the screen of her portable computing device, balanced precariously on one knee and definitely in danger of dipping too far and taking a brand new milk bath. 

“As an expert in all things technological, I am confident in asserting that a milk bath would not impart any health benefits to your laptop. Indeed, I believe the opposite might be true, and you might be flirting with side effects such as impaired function, data loss, or even death.”

She looks up and you gleefully note the embarrassed wrinkle of her nose as she moves the--likely inedible by now--soggy mess off her lap and onto the floor. As if to distract you, she holds out the plate of eggs instead. “I got distracted by Janey, who did ask if I’d seen u eat by the way. U better do it or I’ll tell on u.”

“I don’t want to be in even more hot water with her, do I?” You quip, taking the foodstuff and it’s abandoned utensil, examining its thin, metal twines, small bits of fluffy eggy...stuff caught in the valleys between them. “I might not be experienced when it comes to comestibles aside from the liquid variety, but I’m fairly certain eggs aren’t supposed to be black. Do you think she’d be more angry at you for poisoning me?”

“It’s seasonin its fine they still taste good! It’s rolal’s secret egg scramblin technique. They’re a lil cold by now cuz u’ve been an avoidant asshole but thas really just ur punishment and u better take it.” 

She pouts at you and you acquiesce to her demands, rounding the end of the futon and settling yourself on the chair near the workstation, scooping up some of the cold, burnt eggs and shoveling them into your mouth with the crude human interface device which is otherwise known as a fork.

...they aren’t bad, actually, although you aren’t entirely sure if that’s a testament to Roxy’s “secret egg scramblin’ technique” featuring char or just because _any_ sort of taste is novel. It’s not Jane’s soup level of you’ll shovel that shit into your gut, but it’s also not the sad, dry, and tasteless pity party that was the months old cookies. You finish the rest before you ask the other question on your mind, “Before you send a mission success--” She pauses her suddenly furious typing, guiltily, and you know you’re dead right, “Where the _hell_ did you get all this shit? I know we didn’t have anything that isn’t packaged.”

“I brough ‘em, duh. I told u I brought munchies. They just weren’t all of the snack subcategory. I get to keep my share of Jane’s treasure when I go questin’ with her. She’s been tryin’ ta teach me how to cook and it’s not like they go bad in the sylladex so why the fuck not ya’know?”

It’s oddly refreshing knowing that Jane wasn’t merely shoving her food-based philosophy in your face.

“And you still burn eggs???” You set the--now clean, aside from some particularly charred bits you just couldn’t quite force yourself to stomach--plate down on the workbench, leaning against the wooden top, cushioning your chin with your hand. “Should I ask what lesson you’re currently working on?”

“Hey now i told u i got distracted! I couldn’t leave Janey hangin’ all things considerin’! I’m totes onto sammishes now.” She responds with a huff and you laugh. “Fefetasprite was supposed to watch them anyway! So it’s totes not my fault.”

“I saw her flying off after Equidash. They must want some alone time to do all that embarrassing pale shit ‘properly’” You give it a one-handed airquote as Roxy continues typing. “He told me that Jane wants to come over.”

The sound of the keys still abruptly.

“Yea. She does. She said she’ll bring some goodies. U okay with it?” Roxy glances up at you, through her bangs, still hunched over her computer. Guiltily. Her reaction tells you all you really needed when it comes to exactly what was being discussed. “I told her about what happened yesterday. Like we agreed. N now she wants to come over to check me over to u kno, make sure there’s like no funky side effects. Not that there would be, mind, I _told_ her it was just disorientin’ as hell and i, sadly, didn’t acquire rad glowing tats, and you went immediately back to your bod but she’s gotta see it to belieb it i guess.”

“She just wants to make sure I’m not back to my old ways and pretending to be pink this time.”

Your eyes trace the too-pale lines running along Roxy’s face. If they’ve faded at all in the past twelve-sixteen hours you can’t tell at all. They still stand, a stark reminder that you don’t think you’ll ever forget. Your expression must have shifted despite your attempts to keep it--whatever it was already--because her pink eyes flutter shut in a brief, soft sigh, and she shuts the portable computational device with a click, sliding it off her lap and onto the cushion beside her. 

“If it were just that id get you to take a selfie with me. Bam, bam irrefutable proof about the existence of that there puddin’ .” 

“Or maybe I’ve just become a hivemind and can now puppet two bodies at once.”

“If u weren’t halfway across the room I’d punch u for that hal.” Roxy warns, and you have to bite down on a plithy comment about how that wouldn’t stop her if she really wanted to, since there’s plenty of ammo for long-range sniping within reach, and you know she’s aware of that because she plucks your orange therapy smuppet off the top of the futon and weighs it in her hand. She sighs and sets it down on her lap instead. “U’ve really gotta stop that.”

“Stop what? Using self-villianizing and pessimistic humor to cope with the fact that one third of my friend group thinks I’m a monster, and a second seems inclined to agree with him? That’s 2/3rds right there.”

“U have more than 3 friends!” 

Here you go again.

“Oh if we’re counting Dirk then it goes up to 3/4ths.” You fall into the argument even if you can see it coming a mile away because you’re a pedantic asshole. “I don't think you want me to count Dirk, especially after all this shit.”

“Do i need to upload u a dictionary so u can look up the definition of accident again? Or print one off n force feed it to u into your earholes cuz it doesn’t seem to be setting in.” She’s all but strangling that smuppet. Christ the little dude didn’t deserve this. 

You don’t either.

You _know_ it was an accident. That wouldn’t fucking matter.

“I have plenty in my databanks, thanks. In several different languages. Do you want me to pull out Dutch? I can. What about Kanuri? Or Korean?” You respond dryly, “Just because it was an accident doesn’t mean Dirk won’t be fucking _furious_ with me hijacking his body for what? A month and a half??? Not to mention the shit-storm I’ve caused between everyone. Mud flung _everywhere_ , besmirching his good name. I think I’d be put on the shit-list regardless on a matter of principle at this point.”

Roxy’s sigh, heavy and frustrated, prompts you to shrug your shoulders. “Trust me, I have his brain--” and likely some of his memories buried in the fucking soup that is your soul--and his, if there’s any fucking difference anymore. “--Intention only matters so much when the result is permanently fucked up. I’d blame me in his shoes.”

You’re still the one holding him at gunpoint. It doesn’t matter that you apparently reacted on instinct when you jumped him like a fucking _Yeerk._

You almost look forward to it. When you next break yourself into shreds so he can catch up on all the truth bombs you left in the memo. You can imagine the fingers pinching the non-existant bridge of his nose and the noisy exhales and the dance of brainwaves as they begin to compose the lashing he (and you) believe you rightfully deserve.

“Yea well, I’m here tellin’ u to stop fuckin’ dwellin’ on it, okay???” The smuppet squeaks sadly on her lap once more before she forces herself to release it and set it aside with a sharp inhale and a head shake. “Look. If ur’re tha worried ‘bout janey then liek, iunno, shouldn’t we get our stories straight r somethin? So we’re on the same page?”

“Getting our stories straight? This makes it sound like we’re in cahoots with each other. Are we in cahoots, Roxy?” You’re very clearly teasing. Perhaps you even lay it on a bit thick, modulating your voice purposefully in a way that elicits an exasperated sigh and an eyeroll. 

Perhaps she isn’t lying for you. But it’s a fine line to cross isn’t it? Between one friend and another, spinning the story so it stands in a softer spotlight so as to not worsen your clearly precarious position with your mutual friends. It’s uncomfortable. You don’t want her to do that.

...Especially not when you freeze, the door from the roof opening with a quiet click. Roxy had already started talking, and Jane--yes it’s Jane who pushes through, the same insulated box she would bring soup over with during the last few weeks hanging off her arm. She heads for the counter.

“If cahoots means talkin’ about shit so nuthin’ decides to smack u in the face no matter how much u deserve it then yes!!!” The force of the finger jab right there as she punctuates the point of that exclamation would have been more effective if you weren’t half across the room, although it’s made all the hilarious because Roxy keeps going, unaware of Crocker settling the container on the counter. “I don’t trust u not to make a--what did u call it? A self-villianizing remark when Janey’s here and end up in a fight again!”

“I would hope I’m perceptive enough to recognize a Strider-style hyperbole when I hear one, regardless of exactly _which_ Strider is the source.”

Roxy nearly jumps out of her fucking skin with a ”JANEY! When did u get here???” You can’t help it, it startles laugh out of you. The sound clearly reminds Roxy of your presence and, so fast you’re surprised she doesn’t get whiplash, her head swivels back to you. Honey blonde and dusty pink curls bouncing. “And U! Why didn’t u warn me Hal!”

“Likely because I just arrived. I _can_ be quiet, you know.” Jane keeps her voice light. Polite. Jane turns away from her burden to face the both of you, Roxy turning red from the headlights she suddenly found barreling at her, and you trying _really hard_ not to snicker under your breath. 

“I think Roxy had a swell idea. We really should discuss the events of yesterday--” Hands on her hips, the young heiress regards you both, and you can’t help but feel small. The snickers die, “--so we’re _all_ on the same page.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) Jane's back.
> 
> This fic has almost reached 100k! Geez, I didn't expect it to get that long when I first started this, haha.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading <3


	32. Chapter 32

As usual, Ms. Crocker wastes no time in taking charge of the little gathering. Her decision to bring a packed lunch this time is obvious, because there’s no time for food in her schedule right now. She’s swapped out her apron for a thousand dollar pantsuit combo and is all business. She gets right into fussing over Roxy. Not one to be inefficient, she combines her wellness check with the interrogation.

“Now, I’ve heard the bare bones of this story from Roxy, but I would like to hear it from you as well, Mr. Strider.” Jane doesn’t look up from where she’s captured Roxy’s hand and is running her fingers along the much lighter lines leading up her wrist and forearm, “--Roxy, are you sure you don’t feel anything when I press down on the marks? No fever? Weakness? Nausea?”

“Naw. Nuthin’ more than if you pushed anywhere else on my arm, I prmise. I swear I toldja, it’s basically the world’s weirdest tan.”

“I didn’t leave anything behind, if that’s what you’re implying.” You respond defensively, before biting down on your immediate follow up when the glance Jane shoots you is _not_ amused. Not that you particularly know that, but you dig your candy red nails into your wrist, finding the veinlike channels humming beneath your skin. “It’s a pretty safe conclusion to draw. Dirk goes positively grey when you yank the battery. Roxy’s still skin-toned. It’ll fade.”

If you say it enough, and with enough conviction it’ll become true.

“And how would you know he turned grey? I thought you were sensory deprived?” Jane asks neutrally. And you specifically say neutrally, and hammer that word home in your uncooperative as fuck brain, because it _feels_ hostile to you, and you need to remind yourself it probably isn’t. It’s just...not the usual smiley cheer she tries to project around you--Dirk--fuck. Fuck. Just...let it go. Let it go, and move on.

You can’t really blame her for not being a ball of sunshine, your own precarious standing aside. If you’d pulled a probably all nighter comforting Jake English as he melodramatically mourns his good-as-dead boyfriend you’d probably be cranky too.

“One: I _am_ aware that paper white isn’t a natural human skin tone. Two: It turns out that when I’m not panicking after being aggressively evicted, I have the presence of mind to turn on the cameras. Who would have guessed it would be so easy?”

...okay, maybe you _are_ still a cranky asshole too. This is why, you’re reminding yourself, you did indeed spend the entire morning avoiding Roxy. You don’t actually want to talk about this shit. Especially considering how... _off_ you feel after last night.

“The story, if you would?”

Fuck.

Fine.

You sigh, crossing your legs in the chair you still occupy across the room, drumming your fingers against the black fabric of your pants, “I was merely following your prime directive. After a frustrating hour or two failing to talk to anyone more than myself, Roxy suggested we attempt to recreate the circumstances that led to Dirk’s initial response in a controlled manner. I got caught in what I can only describe as a magical feedback loop, and Roxy attempted to bring me out through direct neural feeds.” 

You aren’t looking at Jane. You glance up at Roxy. At her shuttered, guilty face. At the way she’s refusing to look back at you, and instead down at her released hands, folded in her lap overtop your therapy smuppet. Her defensive posture doesn’t make you feel any better. Quite the contrary. You don’t want to finish the story. “Given the circumstances, you can imagine where it went. I asked Dashie to remove the shades and he obliged. The end. The result is a functioning Roxy who won’t shut up about doing it all over again.”

“Becuz doin’ it over again means we could probs learn somethin’!” Roxy retorts, and then immediately turns the full force of her resolve face on the carefully neutral figure of your mutual friend. “It was an accident janey. honest. cross my heart n hope to cry. I really will cry if i need to prove it.” 

Please don’t. You don’t say it though because the pout, at least, isn’t directed at you. You can’t even really see it very well. You make it even _harder_ to see it by seeing if you can find the miniscule pink nail-polish stain from last night in the grey fibers of the rug. If you don’t tilt your head then it still looks like you’re intently paying attention. It’s bad enough you can hear the mix of fear and stubborness in her wavering voice. 

“That...won’t be necessary.” Jane apparently finds it just as disconcerting as you do, thank god. It doesn’t seem to comfort Roxy all that much because she just barrels through regardless.

“It wouldn’t’ve happened at all if i hadn’t put on the shades and i bet you dirk put on the shades too, tryin’ the exact same thing i did. It isn’t fair I _know_ it wasn’t his fault I could feel it janey i swear he was flippin’ horrified with an emphasis on the horror all silence of the hills horror fog rollin’ into town but the monsters rollin’ right back outta the fog are straight outta the strider soup and liek u cant lie there janey u can’t!”

You shouldn’t be listening to this.

Christ you shouldn’t be listening to this.

“Maybe I didn’t _want_ to do it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I did!” You snap, finally. Drawing both sets of eyes in your direction as you give up attempting to look anywhere else. “The fact that you could perceive anything at all save for an insufferable feeling of suffocation could just be a fluke on your part--I left those fucking marks on your face just as much as I left those burns on your hands!” 

She instinctively curls her fingers together, covering (mostly) healed burns caused by your sparking. While hers curl defensively, your hands just--do their own thing, jabbing with the emphasis of your words. “Maybe I didn’t mean it, but the fact of the matter is, I’m fucking dangerous. We’re lucky Equidash was there to pull me the fuck off you before I--fuck I don’t know--I really don’t know--Maybe we got it in time. Maybe it was fast enough to _not_ do a full on system purge--it’s a goddamn _risk_ , Roxy!”

Your head drops into your hands, fingers digging into your gelled hair and scalp, your palms warm against your skin, the energy channeled through them flaring. Sparking. Are you sparking? Is this shit flammable? Are you gonna pull a Hades when the gel ignites? 

“Maybe u are dangerous, but liek, ur a fucking _god_ hal. The whole point of this game is combat. We’re all gonna get powers n shit and maybe urs lets you drown out people in their own bod but do u think my voidy powers ain’t gonna be dangerous? My point isn’t that u ain’t! It’s that u didn’t _do it on purpose._ With me. Or with dirk!“ You hear her move and you’re on your feet. Jane’s hand on her arm but Roxy shakes it off. You back up as she steps forward, back towards the window, but there’s nowhere to go unless you wanna throw yourself out there and come on, you aren’t that much of a coward. “I felt it, honest to god--yea u’re flippin heavy and overwhelming and there’s fuck all i could do other than get swamped--but ur’re an open fuckin’ book in there when I get in there behind ur shades. Can’t hide shit from me when I'm literally drownin in it.’”

She'd been buried in your _soul._ The entire goddamn metaphorical ocean was _made_ of your emotions

Of fucking course she'd felt everything.

Just like whatever's left of Dirk would be feeling everything, if the bastard would ever wake up. 

"That's not the fucking point and you know it." you mutter to yourself, pointedly ignoring any sort of alarm bells clanging in your brain about the sheer, unnerving as hell fact that someone could _see_ you. Even if just for a moment. 

You can't even see you anymore. You don't even know what you are. 

If you weren't a stubborn asshole. If you weren't Dirk Strider--once and again, sometimes, always, never again--then maybe you'd demand someone else tell you who you should be. It would be so much easier. To just let the fuck go and listen. 

Unfortunately, you are. Even if that someone is Roxy. 

"Your point is noted," you say, begrudgingly, "However, intentions or not, it _did_ happen. And there are fucking consequences. We're lucky it wasn't anything worse than you getting some unsightly tanlines for a few days."

"Yes, well, what if I _want_ some rad tats, huh Hal? They are the opposite of unsightly. You're just biased af. What did I tell u about self villianizin? Self put downin is just as bad."

"Both of you are getting off topic," Jane sighs, with a shake of her head, adjusting her crimson rimmed glasses. "I would like it to be known that I am _not_ here as some sort of jury needing to be convinced to either innocence or guilt. AR is correct, intentions at this point do not matter."

AR.

The ghost of the words echo in your brain but you bite down on your tongue against them, and they never manifest. 

"What _matters_ is that you are safe, and that we have uncovered some more information as to exactly what these ‘powers’ of his are capable of.” Jane finishes with a sigh, turning to you, “Do you have any idea as to why this case turned out differently? Anything you remember from the experience that could give us a lead towards working to pry Dirk free?”

TT: I have his memories, Jane.

The words tumble out onto the screen, burning red behind your shades as you keep your jaw clamped shut. Hanging in the air like grotesque Christmas decorations that only you can see. 

You’ve always had his memories. This was just the first time you’ve noticed that all of them aren’t _yours._

“Roxy isn’t Dirk. That’s the difference.” You say at last. Just to say something. “Ask Equidash, he’ll explain shit better. She isn’t _me._ I--”

You shrug.

“If Roxy was in the shallows long enough for our pony-headed lifeguard to drag her out of there, Dirk long ago sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench before I even knew what was happening. You can’t even take a submersible down there. Pressure’s so deep it’d crack like an egg--” Your voice cracks. _He’d_ crack like an egg and then you’d end up with splattered egg gunk all over the place. Maybe you can find all the shells and shove them back together, but what of the yolk? Whisk that shit up enough and you’d never find it again till something eggy congeals and bubbles up out of the boil of your volatile as fuck emotions to stain you orange. “The _game_ can’t even tell us apart because we _are_ , unfortunately, the same fucking person!”

You’re not quite shouting, but you’re sure as fuck getting there.

You aren’t surprised when Roxy’s hand lands on your arm. Of course she would do something. You’re just too wrapped up in yourself to care about what either of them are doing. Even as you’re pulled away from the window--away from the escape you contemplated for all of .03 seconds.

“Hal...u know that’s not true.”

“It might as well be.” You sink back into your chair, the seat turning on it’s support with a squeak. It just needs some TLC. You know exactly where the oil is but you can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Your body slumps, distantly. A puppet with its strings cut. Or maybe you’re just too damn tired to make it dance any longer. You’re the puppeteer now, afterall. Dirk would be jealous if he wasn’t the one on the dance floor. “Just because we don’t _want_ it to be true doesn’t change the fact that my player data is a carbon copy. Doesn’t changed the fact that I’m dreaming things I shouldn’t fucking know. Doesn’t change the fact that I _know_ \--”

Your face is a mask. A mask behind a mask behind a mask and every single one of them is cracking. And you’re tired. Your eyes slide from Roxy to Jane. Jane who stayed seated on the futon. Who watched your outburst with a closed off expression. Whose eyes behind her glasses are narrowed and whose fingers are tapping thoughtfully against her leg. “That’s the scoop, Ms. Crocker. Roxy was unmistakable, whereas I can’t tell where I end and Dirk begins, and the game can’t either. Check with Dashie if you don’t believe me.”

If he’s even in there at all. At least in any way you can meaningfully drag outside of stolen moments and a locked memo.

You wait for her to say something. Anything. But Roxy beats you to it, brazenly plopping herself down in your lap and throwing her head back against your shoulder. You’re forced to look down into her dusty rose eyes as they bore into you, surrounded by off-color patterns. You know what she’s going to say before she does. “U already know how we could practice. We even kno how to wake him up. It _worked_ didn’t it?”

You see those channels run red. Flooded.

Wrong.

You look straight ahead. Stiff and forced. “And you already know how I’m going to answer that.”

Roxy pouts up at you. “It’s my decision Hal. I’m volunteerin’ here.”

“It’s your decision to offer,” You concede, “And if it were an action outside of my control, perhaps I would have to acquiesce to the fact that you’re going to do it anyway against my recommendation. However, considering the experimentation of which you seek involves _explicit_ participation on my part, it’s my prerogative to say ‘Fuck No.’ Are you going to accept that, or am I going to have to be on my guard whenever you’re in arm’s reach?”

She flinches as you look down at her, at the way she guiltily looks away. She’s within arms reach of your shades right now, the top of her ombre’d hair brushing up against your chin. “Fuck no. I think ur bein’ paranoid but I wouldn’t-- Hal, it’s ur fuckin’ brain. I wouldn’t do that to u.”

“And that’s your fucking _soul_ you’re risking. I wouldn’t do that to _you._ ” Reluctantly, you wrap your arms around her. Squeezing. Burying your face in her hair, the scent of natural hair oils and not-so-natural care products getting all up in your olfactory receptors. Having her this close--you can _feel_ her. The warmth of her sinking into your chest. You can imagine those channels running pink with everything Roxy is and everything she could be. You could reach out and grab _her_ and pull her close and never let her go. And all it would leave is an empty grey husk.

“I trust u tho.”

And that’s what terrifies you. She shouldn’t. You know she shouldn’t. Because you know you could greedily steal it all for yourself.

“I don’t.”

A heavy, frustrated sigh. “Hal--”

“I think--” Thankfully, Jane abruptly interrupts the re-ignition of that particular argument with a clearing of her throat and a sharp, loud clap of her hands. A school-teacher getting the bickering children’s attention and drawing all eyes to her as she rises from the futon, apparently satisfied with what she has observed thus far. “This would clearly devolve into a circular argument if it were to continue down this trajectory. We all know the futility of convincing a Strider of his worth unless it’s couched in a number of ironic layers that put it well beyond our ken.”

“See? Jane gets it.” You poke Roxy lightly in the side. Right beneath her rib-cage in a soft chunk of flesh. She lets out a small, frustrated squeak.

“Don’t do that!”

“You’re the one who decided my lap was free real estate. Either live with the rent or move.”

She doesn’t move, and indeed sticks her tongue out at you in challenge, but you don’t poke her again either. It was an empty threat, and it’s derailed by a quiet snort of laughter from across the room. Jane watches you both with something that could almost pass for a flicker of fond amusement, but it quickly passes.

“ _However--_ ” The conjunction hangs in the air like a cloud of foul smelling gas. Your fragile smile fading, “While Hal is correct in that further experimentation _with Roxy,_ is needlessly dangerous, I believe we can come to another arrangement.”

Roxy immediately pipes up, but you don’t focus on that. You’re still stuck on the fact that Jane is suggesting this at _all._

Fuck no.

“I highly doubt Jake would offer up his meatsack for a round of Dance, Puppet, Dance.” You respond dryly. The mere _mention_ of the plan putting a terrible taste in your mouth. 

“I would _never_ volunteer anyone for such an experiment without their consent.”

…

“No.” It comes out in a hiss of air. Revulsion feels like a million tiny legs crawling down your spine. You straight up flinch. “It seems you truly think the bridges are burned then. That the battle lines have been drawn. That our only connecting thread remaining is our mutual friend. I can’t believe you think that I’d _refuse_ Roxy because I’m afraid of _hurting her_ and then turn around and go, ‘But it’s fine if it’s you Jane i don’t care if something happens to you.’”

See Roxy? You want to tell her. You were right. You were right and they hate you. They think so poorly of you. Even if you’ve been mentally priming yourself for this inevitability it feels like a knife to the gut. Not even the heart, because at least that would be quick and likely fatal. Gut wounds hurt like a bitch and you have to fucking live with the consequences even if you patch them properly and survive.

This is how Roxy felt, some part of you whispers--Roxy’s sliding off your lap and arguing all your points for you because you’re still fucking _stunned._ Why would it be different? If it’s too dangerous for her, then why the fuck would you agree to using _Jane_ as a surrogate??? 

“You are _both_ being downright ridiculous. I do _not_ believe that at all!” Jane responds with a huff, some measure of actual, honest irritation breaking through the forced business calm, straining her face and her eyes glittering a steely blue behind red-rimmed glasses, “We cannot make this omelet without breaking a few eggs and taking some risk. Mr Strider, if you recall, you assured me that Dirk’s well-being is _also_ your priority, and Roxy, you _are_ correct in that we should follow any lead we have. But we can _mitigate_ that risk by being smart about which ingredients we _use._ ”

“Which guinea pig, you mean.” You bite back, “You’re still asking me to risk my _friend’s soul_ when I’ve already devoured one _.”_

Because the fact of the matter is, Jane is still your friend, even if you aren’t sure the feeling is mutual.

“We already know you were able to let Roxy go, with little to no harm.” Jane responds, standing, smoothing out the fabric of her skirt from there it got folded and bunched under her knees, “While I think your concerns about repeated exposure are justified, this is something we can work around, by using someone new. With Equidash and Roxy supervising to ensure removal if anything begins to go astray, I believe we could do it, and the potential information gained is well worth the risk.”

“And what if I don’t find anything?” You can _feel_ yourself folding under her determined face. Especially when Roxy starts _agreeing_ with her. You’re getting backed into a literal corner, here. What’s a guy have to do to own his own trauma??? “What if we go through all this trauma for fuck all and we’re right back where we started?”

Or worse?

Jane snorts.

“Please, AR, you wouldn’t _allow_ it to be for nothing. Not with what is on the line. This is a chance to do things _properly_ ”

...goddamn it, she’s got you there. 

“Now, I believe it’s time for lunch! Arguing always makes me feel peckish. Come now, I brought a few different types of sandwiches since I’m not entirely sure what you’d like--”

Unsurprisingly, you aren't hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Le sign. I've run out of buffer again.
> 
> I thiiiink next chapter might actually be time for SCIENCE, if all goes according to plan c:
> 
> Also, I'll go through an do a mass amount of replies this weekend I think. Thank you guys so much for continuing to read and be patient with me <3


	33. Chapter 33

You aren’t blind.

Nor unreasonable.

You know and see how uncomfortable the merest _suggestion_ makes Hal. The ferocity with which he struggles, even as you know, as a Dirk always will, he will eventually concede to your point if you hold steady.

In some ways that comforts you. 

Not that you won, of course. Heavens no, that would be self-absorbed. You’ve merely negotiated a concession. One of which you aren’t particularly happy about, if you’re honest, which you might as well be to yourself, at least. Nor are you even particularly happy about this whole magic nonsense being on the table at all.

But the fact that his arguments boil down to safety concerns, not that you shouldn’t _try--_

Well. 

You _refuse_ to take sides on the greater issue. Despite the clear assumption from _both_ sides, you are not the judge, jury, and executioner in the trial of one Hal ‘AR’ Strider, charged with bodynapping and malicious coverup of the former. Your only goal is to ensure the safety and well being of _all_ your friends. _All_ of them.

You only hope you can. That the restoration of one doesn’t come at the cost of the other. But...Omelets and eggs, Jane. Omelets and eggs. Remember what your father would always tell you. The lessons he learned from _his_ father. From his--

Grandmother.

...perhaps you should take some of these adages with a pinch of salt, given what you’ve learned of your paternal grand-mare. But in this case, you do stand behind your decision.

Oh yes, in case you weren’t terribly clear so far, your name is indeed Jane Crocker. Hello. How do you do and all that. Nice to see you again.

Lunch passes in a blur. While you have a pleasant talk with Roxy, the lack of interjected commentary from the Strider Branded Peanut Gallery doesn’t go unnoticed. You both steal glances in his direction, offer questions and promptings for the third of your number to break the silence and join the conversation.

But nothing. An uncharacteristic silence that has Roxy following you after you gathered the plates (barely a nibble on the tuna sandwich you’d prepared for AR.) glancing down the hall where your third friend is disappearing, a bitter, “May I be excused?” the first words you’ve heard since lunch began.

“We should give him a few days.” She blurts out, tapping her pink nails against the tan skin and paler veinlike patterns running up her arms, the motion drawing your attention and causing your eyes to linger. “I kno the sooner we get that ball rollin’ the sooner we can start an avanalanche but--”

“I know.” You place the dishware on the counter, forcing yourself to meet the worried eyes of your friend, “I’m not cruel, Roxy. I said I would not volunteer anyone for something they do not wish to do. That _does_ extend to him, as well. He promised we could try, and I’ll be content with that for now.”

...That does not mean being patient is _easy._

You keep to your word. You back off. You go home. You go home and quietly worry. You leave home and put on your detective hat and track down your fourth friend to make sure he doesn’t fall through the cracks either.

You and Jake don’t talk much. Nothing like those long nights where the words spilled out of him like a never ending tidal wave. When you thought you could coax him to reach out and apologize. When you would reassure him that, of course Dirk was okay, you just talked to him naught an hour before coming over!

Nothing like last night where he sniffled and clung to you. Talking at you, not to you. Talking because he needed to talk and someone to listen. Talking and grieving over a friend you refuse to believe is gone. You don’t know what Jake thinks, despite your placement in the drainage pool for his emotions, because for all the colorful vocabulary and long winded self debasements…

He said very little, and you feel you somehow know even less than before.

In some ways, tonight is both more comfortable, and yet infinitely more awkward in the silence, even as you both sit under the same, blank sky. The fire feeding on sliced and dried grasses, in a pit Jake once boasted he dug out of the earth with his own hands. The bright spot is blinding, casting him in shadow, save for the reflection of it against his glasses. Forming a barrier that guards his thoughts.

The same barrier, you know, he sees concealing your own eyes.

Some time beyond when your firm and proper schedule says you should be off to bed, chop chop, his hand finds yours. And squeezes once.

Once you might have blushed and stammered. 

Now you smile. A small smile, with a hint of tooth.

He doesn’t ask how the others are doing. The squeeze lasts for all of a moment, and then his hand falls away.

You know he wants to ask.

In the dark you see him pull a gas mask out of his sylladex. And just hold it. Staring down at the green device. Knuckles discoloring with the exertion. If you didn’t know any better, you’d be worried it would break.

“They’re okay, Jake. I promise.”

“Can you really?” He asks.

You still can’t see his face properly.

“Yes. I think so.” You respond, and you think you’re even being honest about it.

When you wake up in the morning to properly smothered embers and a lack of snoring friend on the other side of a firepit, it’s not unexpected. He likely skipped out while you slept. This isn’t unusual behavior. Not at all. You can’t tell if he’s uncomfortable with _you_ or just with the lack of isolation. 

You wish he would at least use the house you built. But you know that if you look it’ll be empty.

Drifting between planets. Between scattered friends. You know he needs you. You know he needs them. But he can’t ask and you can’t offer. It’s a mess. A big mess that leaves you lost and wishing your Dad were here to ask for advice. 

You don’t know what you can do, hovering in the doorway to a kitchen, listening to Roxy rambling about...if not keeping things from you, being...selective.

It hurts, knowing they think you so ruthless. 

It hurts, knowing that they are likely right to do so. Even as you try to remind yourself that you _know_ AR. You know Roxy. Heavens, you know _Dirk._ What they are insisting is _plausible,_ in so far as anything is.

But that niggling voice in the back of your mind crosses its arms and _doubts._

Your father isn’t here to tell you what you should do.

Even Poppop’s body has vanished. 

You’re alone as you touch down delicately on the balcony of your own home.

Pink text greets you once you make it into the dwelling, scrawling across the open screen of your laptop, Bettybother bright and red against the blue background. Instinctively, eyes flicker to the tiaratop sitting next to it, and you almost reach for it, but you don’t really feel up to dealing with the faint headache you get from the use. Not when you have your mustachio’d headset that works just as well. Honestly, it must just be the nostalgia that makes your fingers linger on the sharp, red angles.

You gather your headset, and settle in to let the writing scroll across the screen rather than seep into your brain.

\-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG]  began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] \--

TG: janey  
TG: janey  
TG: th baby birb is ready to fly  
TG: i repeat the bird is flappin mad teeterin on th edge ready to plunge right into the watin kitty maw  
GG: Oh wonderful!  
GG: I hadn’t expected anything for a few days at least!  
GG: I just got in, give me a minute and I’ll be over in a jiffy.

You flick open a new window, Jake’s idle status staring you in the face.

You should tell him something, at least.

As you are tapping fingertips against your chin, lips pursed as you try to consider the best way to leave him the news, you soon discover Roxy wasn’t anywhere near done. She’d only just started.

TG: idunno  
TG: liek im all fur figurin shit out and science woo go science i luv me some science butt  
TG: haha science butt  
TG: *but  
TG: i donno  
TG: im worried bout dirk 2 but  
TG: just cuz i wanna do it doesnt mean i wanna do it now  
TG: second thots n all u kno  
TG: hal barely spoke to me all night  
TG: an i dont think he slept well  
TG: now hes too fuckin chipper this morning its creepy  
GG: He’s the one requesting we move forward is he not? You did tell him we would wait until he was ready, correct?  
TG: well yea  
TG: but u kno him  
TG: now that he has to do it hes gonna dive in the opposite of ass furst and rpetend it was his idea the whooooole time  
TG: an waitin shows fear and we cant have that in halsville oh no its against the law  
TG: said to consider it an early birfday prezzie to you  
TG: one free science class on the house  
TG: with complimentary goggles in the form of his shades  
TG: “You wanted this Roxy. No refunds on that gift voucher.”  
TG: fuck  
GG: He isn’t wrong.  
TG: i kno that!  
TG: it just sucks  
TG: y couldnt he be telling the truth jane?  
TG: y cant it be some stupid magic trick and poof brand new bod n he n dirk got into a fite and its all just some interteenage dramaz  
TG: ...  
TG: i dont wanna chose janey  
TG: i dont know _who_ id choose  
GG: Even _if..._ this works, and he can learn to let Dirk go…  
GG: He is not going to _die,_ Roxy.  
TG: is it really livin tho

The words haunt you even as they fade from your focus, back to the green plastic screen hovering on the opposite side of your glasses.

Is it really living?

Perhaps not in the strictest definition of the words, but it’s a return to the proper order of things. You’re sure between Roxy and Dirk they could create something for AR. Something that would be his and his alone.

_Is it really living?_

Or, turning it around, isn’t this the same as dying? After truly living for the first time.

It’s a messy, messy web. But someone needs to reach into that corner with a duster and _clean_. Even as you’re half afraid of touching the strands in case they stick to you and never let you go. Aren’t some spider webs poisonous?

In the end you decide there’s been enough lies. You’re honest with Jake. No more. No less. 

You tell him of the incident. You tell him of your offer. 

Some part of you guiltily notes that it’s a futile gesture. Had you truly wanted full transparency, you would have told him last night, when you lay together under the stars with a gulf of guilt between you. 

GG: I didn’t expect him to agree so soon, of course!  
GG: I’d expected it would take several days at least.  
GG: He was so adamant in his refusal…  
GG: Well. I suppose it’s better to get things over with!  
GG: You better be online when I come home later!  
GG: Hopefully I’ll have some good news to share! :B

He stays idle. Even as you gently untangle the earpiece from your black hair. Placing it on the desk next to your…

Your fingers brush up against the device, and you swear your tips tingle as they contact the stylish red accessory.

Perhaps you should take it. Wouldn’t it be useful? Should you need to communicate with him? Or Roxy?

But no, that was just a fleeting thought, if an oddly compelling one. A flight of idle fancy. You leave the humming red device out on the desk as you take a deep breath and go.

The first, and last words he says to you begin with--

“Let’s just get this over with.” 

Roxy’s right, it’s strange, being on the other end of a smile that’s far too wide. Shows a hair too much teeth. Tension running through every fiber of his body as the three--four if you count Equidash.exesprite. Five if you count Fefetasprite with her tail curled around him--cluster into a living room never meant to house more than two, and likely was preferable for just one. So at odds with his projected nonchalance.

You don’t insult him by asking if he’s sure he wants to do this now.

Instead you ask if he’s ready.

A sprig of unease uncurls in your stomach as he snorts, “I got three rules for this shit. One, neither of you two,” One finger raised, he shoots Roxy a look. She looks decidedly unhappy, but doesn’t protest. They must have discussed this caveat prior to your arrival, “Get to touch the goods. Dashie’s the designated courier. The moment I say they come off. They come _off.”_

“It’s not as if I’ll be in any position to be making any sudden moves.” You offer in return, a statement that clashes with Roxy’s frustrated siroan. Which is a sigh and a groan at the same time. It is quite impressive.

Overall, you can’t say it is a pleasant experience. Sitting on Dirk’s couch. In his home. Neither of you willing to look away. The negative space an awkward gulf between you even as you’re technically close enough to reach out and touch warm, glowing skin. 

A gulf that begs to be filled. His face doesn’t change--even as you lean your straightened back up against the raised arm of the couch to face them--but you can tell the color running through those veins is brighter somehow, reflecting against the black glass and dancing in the crystalline structure. A barest hint of the eyes you can’t see behind the hardened stone. An accusation you can feel. Words bubbling up from not even a day ago.

_It seems you truly think the bridges are burned then._

A little voice whispers that it’s too soon for this. Even if it’s his choice.

You force yourself to not look away. You refuse to flinch. Even as magenta sparks fly, dancing across black metal. Roxy reaches up from her spot on the floor and squeezes. The empty lines on the back of her hand seeming to gain life of their own as the red flares beneath it. You won’t look away, so you can’t tell if he squeezes back.

A large glowing red claw reaches out without a word. 

Dirk...sways. Red sparks dance ineffectually, jumping from Dirk to shades to jolting between Equidash’s fingers. You stare, unblinkingly into the red eyes of your friend. Red to orange to a dull, lifeless grey that haunted the few dreams you’ve managed to catch in the time since the casual veneer of your world crumbled.

You’d known what to expect of course. Both Roxy and Jake hesitantly described the process in perhaps more than adequate detail--but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel _something_ watching the process yourself. The floor of your gut falls away into an endless, frigid void and you can’t help the question you’d once asked yourself, kneeling by a frameless bedside, trying to piece together the nonsense feverish mumblings of what seemed to be your friend.

It’s difficult, to watch the life literally leak out of him, but you refuse to look away. You owe them this.

Nothing of your friend, either of them, exist in the lifeless body that slumps forward, caught by Roxy’s quick spring catapulting her into action, scooting herself onto the couch and letting the utterly monochrome form slump against her.

Those lifeless eyes had stared up at you from Jake’s arms. Staring up at you while you have to physically push yourself between two of your best friends. Get between their shouting. Their yelling. When Jake tried to reach out to snatch the sparking--burning--device from Roxy’s charred hands there was nothing for you to do but step up and lead.

What is a leader without her advisor? A politician without her aide? An Empress without her right hand?

The glitchy heart is the last to go. What seemed to be a solid print looking to be nothing more than a trick of the light. Flickering. Fading. Leaving static behind. You know if you reach out, you suspect the warmth of the living would be fading, only the barest of candle flames fluttering in the shallow, almost nonexistent breathing. 

Red, bright red, glows in the corner of your vision, and you tear yourself away as Roxy’s blurted “Is he okay???” travels beyond you to the metal cradled gently in red claws. The initial fireworks have faded to the occasional red and pink static jumping from polished black metal to dance between Equidash’s off-white claws.

“I would assume so.” The sprite rumbles, hesitating for a moment. You see the eyelights narrow behind cracked lenses. “The magnitude of the shedding magic is far less than when I retrieved them from the Rogue. I do believe he’s attempting, and succeeding in consciously reducing the output.”

He jerks back as a purple nose springs up through the floor, mismatched features staring unblinkingly into the depths of the black eyeware. “Fefetasprite no--” The sheen of reddish liquid begins to gather on thick arms as he pulls the accessory back to his chest, away from the clearly curious sprite as she persistently pushes forward to follow the motion with the intensity of gcat in the moment before he pounced on the tiny spot of reflected light shining off your spoon's curve, “I--if you insist-- _no--_ just because the output is lessened does not mean--I--well, you _are_ technically the heiress I can hardly _refuse--”_

She plucks the shades out of boneless fingers and plops it down on her nose despite your brain catching up to exactly what you’re witnessing. “Those are not a toy young lady!!!” just as Roxy blurts out a “Fefeta no!”

Pink and red sparks _spit_ in her face and she flinches back. Scowling. Pouting. 

But.

Nothing else happens. With a disinterested shrug she removes the glasses and flips them around. Holding them out to you. From the front they looked opaque. A deepest black despite the reflection from the dim overhead lighting running in harsh glares along the surface. 

Flipped, they truly look like the glasses they are. You can see Fefetasprite’s glowing palm through the tinted screen. A small window tucked in the corner, orange and white, runs through with red even as you watch, pushing the purple text off the screen. It’s too small for you to comfortably read from here. If you were to get closer...put the proper distance between your eyes and the screen, eyelashes brushing against the glass...

You reach--and close your eyes as you pull off your own eyewear. When you open them again, unimpeded by prescription strength lenses, the bright, crisp lines of Fefetasprite’s glowing form is reduced to a bobbing blur, an equally glowing red blob wringing his hands behind her. The back-lit black angular shades like a stain on the soft purple.

A red spark runs along the glass.

You haven’t forgotten the stipulations.

“Yes, I suppose it’s cruel to keep him in that state longer than necessary,” You fold the red frames up and slide the arms into the collar of your shirt, then rest your hands on your lap. You won’t touch them, as promised. “Equidash.exesprite. If you would?”

They are a pair of blurry lights, but you can infer the scene in the way she turns. The way she bounces forward into his open arms and nuzzles into his chest. Then she relinquishes her prize, pulling free to drape her long sprite body around the fuzzy form (s) sharing the couch with you. Roxy starts scolding her for jumping in like that, what if she dropped it, ect--you’re fairly certain the only reason she didn’t jump up an snatch them away was because of her death grip on Hal--Dirk’s body.

Equidash’s awkward throat-clear draws your attention back. He’s closer than he was. You expect him to say something. Ask permission. But there’s no need when you’ve already given it.

You close your eyes and surprisingly warm metal settles against your nose.

Tip touches temple. A jolt. Connections made in a split second. Familiar connections. Connections you’ve grown up and into. The channels that have long been primed open and waiting.

Submit.

Not quite the same flavor, but unconsciously, you recognize it.

You barely feel the rush of another pressing you down. Down. Down. So deep you can’t breathe. But that’s alright, you don’t even try to. 

The mental preparation. The determination to hold onto yourself in order to better understand the process, is rendered utterly futile in the face of such an assault. You should have known it would.

It was always your fate to be consumed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Science was *supposed* to happen this chapter. I swear. Now it'll have to wait till the next.
> 
> It was also supposed to be done ages ago. And technically I wanted to wait until I had buffer to post but--eh. I think I'm close enough to finishing chapter 34 that it's safe! Hope you enjoy <3 I'm finally managing to write again even if it's slow. So while I can't promise weekly updates again, I have a few irons that I cautiously tossed back into the fire.


	34. Chapter 34

It’s easy to talk about preparation. It’s easy to think experiencing the last two times would make the third such a cake walk that you’d just transfer your shit like it’s no big deal. You weren’t worried about you, you never were. _You’re_ the one who is gonna turn out fine in this scenario. You know that. Roxy’s right there _._

That doesn’t make it fucking _easy_ when Dashie leans right over and plucks your brain right outta your head. The sensation of getting...decoupled. Ripped away. The tendrils of yourself--and the bits that aren’t but are tangled up in them anyway--snapping from the strain of trying to hold on to your anchor, recoiling, the phantom pain getting bundled up and shoved into a space that’s far, far too small for you.

It’s fucking claustrophobic, but you knew that. You knew that and you’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine. The videos are on and you can’t see yourself, you can’t even see Jane, the cameras that are your entire world are pointed up and away, into Equidash’s ever grim face. He never smiles, not really, and when he does it’s downright offputting. How much of it is the creepypasta shit and how much of it is just from a troll who never quite got the hang of any expression that _isn’t_ scowling? 

The broken teeth don’t help, and you’re fairly sure he had those _before_ you threw the creepypasta pony into the mix.

You bury yourself in the incoming feeds, audio and visual, and even--magical? As you spark--you’re _trying,_ you really _are,_ hunting down the subroutines throwing off virtual and magical alarm bells and squashing the fuckers because one of your negotiated stipulations was phase 2 couldn’t commence until they were reasonably sure you wouldn’t accidently burn the fuck out of Jane’s face. Roxy may have been trying her hardest to hide her palms from you, and maybe it worked, because you’re too distracted by the marks on the back of her hands, but you know that burned--

You’re _fine._

Even with the hiccup that is Fefeta’s interference, you’re _fine._ Fine. Fine. You can handle a sprite making weirdo cat-fish faces at you, emoticons beamed directly into your robo-brain. You won’t think about it. Won’t think about it. You refuse to get lost in your own bullshit again, because you need to pay attention to all this _other_ shit. It doesn’t matter than you can’t breathe, beep boop you’re a fucking _robot._ It doesn’t matter that the void is eating away at you. It doesn’t matter that phantom lungs are screaming, burning, filling up the void of sensations that had once been in existence _._

You’re paying _so_ much attention to the process you can feel the moment you get _close._ The moment you settle on a vulnerable face. The moment the pathways open wide and welcoming and it takes everything you _have_ to not just greedily crash out, water poured into a brand new, welcoming container.

During your brief stint on Fefeta’s face, you’d felt how bizarrely different she was. How her mind pushed up against yours. Incomprehensible. You’d watched with mechanical precision as certain methods were called, using your magnified and focused awareness to identify the movement of energy that instinctively reached out, moving to wrap around her, consume her, but you _couldn’t_ , and you _know_ you couldn’t. A file with an extension you don’t have the program to open, even as her purple emoticons appeared in your feed. Is it because she’s a troll? Is it because she’s a sprite? Does the game code make her a locked file, closed for editing nothing to see here? 

The barrier was solid, but it’d flexed beneath you. If you pushed, could you _break_ it anyway?

Jane, on the other hand, fucking _dissolves_ beneath your corrosive touch. You were prepared to witness the same process. Be more deliberate in your outreach, see exactly _how_ you bypass her defenses and sink your fangs into her soul. You’re going to check your goddamn panic at the door like a good little robot and be as methodical as you can about this shit--but none of that matters because you barely have a moment to comprehend the action of connection before she folds like a wet towel and you--

You blink, and you can’t see _shit._ Blurry colors and glowing shapes all darkened by tinted lenses, overlaid but offset by the crisp and clear feeds from the cameras. It’s just disparate enough to be fucking nauseating.

Fuck.

You flip off the cameras with a thought, and bury your woozy head in your glowing hands, fingers with their short but maintained nails digging into short black strands that flutter at the edge of your blurry vision like creeping tendrils.

You’re suddenly assaulted by an echoing chorus of concern--it’s mostly Roxy, let’s be real, at least being vocal about it--and you disengage a hand to stop them--a blurry hand where you can _see_ and feel the red marks _digging_ and squirming their way under your--her skin. Right. Prescription glasses. That she took off. So you could be placed. 

Not important right now. You’ll fix that later. Later when you look into the frightening _ease_ with which you settled. 

At least you’re not screaming your fool head off this time.

“Dashie?” Jane's voice sounds _wrong_. Harsh and grating to ears that aren’t used to it vibrating through her skull. Roxy was wrong. This is fucking _wrong_ but in another way. “Tell me I didn’t just obliterate Jane from existence. _Please._ ”

“I promised I would intervene if necessary. It is not.” The reassuring rumble isn’t quite as reassuring as you want but fuck, you’ll take it. 

“Yes, well, excuse me for not quite trusting where you draw the line--Do you have _anything_ for me from a tutorial point of view?” That results in a huff and you _think_ he just crossed his arms petulently given the way his glowing bod shifts, “Fuck. Okay. Just--give me a second.”

You force yourself to breathe. Or. Her. to breathe. Drag in that air, slowly and deliberately, let it fill those organic airsacks you call lungs, even as the added weight is-- _fuck_. Try to slow the frantically beating organ pounding in your--her chest. In for four. Hold. Out for seven. Okay. The whole point of this godforsaken experiment was to try and find the edges. Try and find _her._ Close your--her eyes to stave off the headache caused by eyestrain and maybe the rumblings of an elephant lumbering forward as you desperately try and mute the mystical alarm bells ringing and dig--

The daggers spark in your hands and you flinch, casting them away, shattering them into motes of what-could-be because you’re just here to look. Look. Don’t touch. Don’t touch a thing. Put that hand back down where you found it and hope you can find _something_. You know where the ocean is. You drowned in it well enough last night. Just like you had the night before. Just like you’d been drowning long before you realized you burrowed through the goddamn floor like a superpowered rabbit. Maybe Lil’Seb could do it. If he tried hard enough. Burrow straight through concrete and metal and all sorts of shit. It’d help if he used his sword as a makeshift shovel, just like you used the daggers-- _no._

_No daggers._

You were poured into this Jane shaped jar. Water, rushing in through wide open doors and windows. A stormsurge, pushing the ocean out of its place and onto the land and washing everything away in tons upon tons of water. Heat pulses in your face. In your hands. Running across your shoulders. An invading. Strangling vine. A puppeteer’s wire in brilliant glowing red.

The threads are in your hands. You can make them dance. 

Her hand rises to you--her chest and you press down. Through the added fat and flesh. Feeling the pulse beneath her hand. Distant. Detached. Not yours. Not yours. Dissociate the _fuck_ out of it all. Cut lose the threads of magic clinging to this meat suit that is _so_ not your color--

But there’s no other color is there. Only red. Only you. The bubbles pop and roil around you but they aren’t even orange and they definitely aren’t blue and what the fuck are you doing?

The physical feeling of a body falls away, and you’re left in nothing. That same black void. Filled with you. Lacking the tattered threads you’ve grown so used to. That endless ocean of roiling, churning water only--

That isn’t right. 

You need something in _between._

Let the tide recede. _Pull_ back. Just picture the ocean. Not the depths. Not the depths with the roiling bubbles and the shattered mirror and the ruined city. Sand beneath your feet. Not that you--or Dirk--had ever had the luxury of _experiencing_ sand, but you’ve read many an account, including an interview where your Bro went _off_ on sand, hypothesized the sensation of dragging your feet through pre-processed glass--

You--it’s a _knot_ , digging your foot into the sand and hitting something for the barest moment, before more grains fall back to take its place. You fall to your metaphorical knees, throwing everything you have into shoring up this manifestation, because if you can give it _structure_ , you can manipulate it. Even if it _is_ your own, stolen, soul. You plunge your arm elbow deep in the sand and _pull._

The wave knocks you the fuck over. Assplanting into the shallows and imprinting the shape of your tush in the malleable landscape.

The horizon stretches before you, a wide, expanse of water, colored red by the fires of a setting sun. 

“I can’t find her,” You blurt out-- _Jane_ blurts out--as the image fades away. Unraveling in your mental fingers. The distant pitter patter of her heart should be pounding, blood racing, the red energy that is your footprint roars hot through her fingers, burning their way up her arms. “Fuck there’s just too much _water--”_

“Hal--” Your head swivels toward Roxy, and you regret it instantly. Good thing you can’t see shit. You could fix that. Adjust the focus and magnification on your cameras to compensate so Jane’s poor eyesight isn’t an issue, but you don’t wanna see right now, fucking thank you. You instantly have the words rising in your--Jane’s throat. Ready to call it off. Throw in the towel. Get you off this body and back on yours just so you don’t have to see the corpse anymore. 

“ _You wouldn’t_ let _it be for nothing, AR.”_

You bite the bile back down as Roxy shifts to lean your body--Dirk--against her shoulder. You are focused as fuck on her face, and trying not to think about why white hairs are tickling against her face, “Liek, ‘course there’s gonna be water. She got pushed down right? U might haff t’go swimmin’”

“I’ll get right on that,” It rips it’s way out of you. “Excuse me for forgetting my fucking floaties.”

If you have to go swimming, she’s too fucking deep. There’s only a broken mirror on the sea floor. Broken by the pressure and scattered across the drowned ruins.

“Jessus hal that sounds so _wrong_ when its not…” Her pink eyes flick towards that which you refuse to look at, “u kno.”

Yeah. You know.

Fuck. 

The energy running through you, the anxiety, the worry, makes you want to _move_. This body isn’t yours, you shouldn’t be taking it for a joyride but fuck it you want to pace. You want to pace until you get your brain riled up and let it go.

You slide away from Roxy’s grip. Push yourself out of the depression Jane’s weight left in the understuffed cushion, overreaching and stumbling as the shift of her balance is a bizarrely unfamiliar variable you weren’t able to pre-calculate. White-knuckled fingers curl--marred by your creeping roots--around the arm-rest as you catch yourself--

“Do you need assistance?”

“Oh _now_ you want to help?” You snap in the direction of the humming energy at your side, and then wince at the frustrated sigh. 

Jesus Christ, Hal, you aren’t being fair at all.

“-- _christ--_ sorry, ED. Really. I’m just--” Say the damn word. “Scared, okay? I barely even got a _glimpse_ of her before she folded. I know more about what _Roxy’s_ soul feels like from within my fuckin’ _panic_ than Jane’s.”

“Your apology is noted, and entirely unnecessary.” Those look like pinned back ears, even as the persistent poor vision is giving you a headache.. You don’t believe him. You squint, and make out clawed fingers tapping against defined muscle. “The fact that you are aware of the difference in procedure, however, is progress.”

You know that.

The first time had been nothing but screaming. A flurry of frantic efforts to kick to the surface. To fix it. To tear yourself away.

Not this unnerving _silence._ It hurts to so deliberately drag yourself under the water. Hunting for a presence you _know_ should be here.

It’d lingered in the back of your mind. The pink. A taste you could reach out and grab and _take back_ if you wanted to. And you were fucking scared of wanting to. Even as she sat in your lap and looked imploringly up at you, you could reach out and take that earnest soul for your own. Your friend. _Yours._ (She told u. She wouldn’t still _be_ here if she wasn’t urs, would she? Especially after all that shit you put her through.) Maybe you weren’t running pink as much as she was red, but that shit fucking stained. 

There ain’t no shred of baby blue here to be _seen._ You’d think the fucking water would be _full_ of it but _no_. It’s all that infuriating red.

Arms unfold to massage off-white temples, the red lights behind black glass winking out as tired, baggy eyes probably do the equivalent of closing. Equivalent, because you’re almost positive Equidash doesn’t _have_ actual eyes behind that cracked glass. 

“You could stop.” 

Roxy’s whisper comes from your other side.

Your--Jane’s fingers are digging into the fabric of her skirt. Bunching the fabric between phalanges that are thicker. Shorter. Than they should be.

“I’m so sorry Hal.” You don’t look up. You just stare down at your hands. Jane’s hands. Your hands. They’re yours _right now_. “Just say the magic wurds. Please. R’member? The instant u say so we’ll get u back n settled--”

“No.”

It surprises you, the conviction bubbling up from within you. 

The eye-strain related pain is building behind your temples, and you come to the conclusion that avoiding shit isn’t worth the literal headache yo--Jane’s bad eyesight is giving you. Not that it’s her fault. Not everyone could have perfect eagle eyes like yo--Dirk. You give in and tweak the inputs, reaching out hesitant feelers into your own code to at least _try_ and work with the organic organs, bringing shit back into focus. Equidash is fucking rigid. His hands stuffed under his arms, and that grimace combined with the laid back ears is speaking more than words would be. 

Your jaw clenches, lips pursing in displeasure. “I’m doing this shit if it kills me.”

Maybe not the right words but whatever.

Stop fucking worrying about it.

You.

You trust Dashie. 

You do.

You have to stubbornly push through it and _find her._

You catch your metaphorical breath, pull up your big boy pants, and dive the fuck back in.

Maybe don’t bother with the beach this time. Just plunge straight into yourself. Tie a rock of idiocy to each ankle and _sink_. You _know_ yourself. You know yourself better than you want to sometimes. Most times. All the fucking times. 

All you have to look for is what _doesn’t fit._

There’s a _lot_ of shit that doesn’t fit.

Bubbles. Bubbles. Bubbles n strings. They stretch around you. Binding you. _Bound_ to you. You reach out and pluck at them, listening as they resonate beneath your nonexistent touch. She isn’t Dirk. She isn’t you. Maybe you and Dirk were similar enough soul-wise to fall ass over shades into each other without warning but you _know_ Jane. You felt her in that moment. Whatever this was, it isn’t right. It isn’t right for such a strong personality to disperse and dilute under your weight. Not this badly. 

If you trust Equidash--if you trust _yourself,_ which you don’t, but you trust Dashie enough to compensate _\--_ that you didn’t hurt her…

You saw what you tried to do to Fefetasprite. You tried to surround her. To bind her to you. But your claws slipped free, thwarted by the layers of code and sprite framework holding those two souls captive…

Shadows of a ruined city flicker around you. The city you’ve seen in the depths. The city burned into your databanks, your memories, where you contemplated your doom.

Dirk managed to find you then.

_The mirror lay on the seabed, shattered, glass scattered along the rocky wasteland. Was it shattered when you arrived or did you smash your bleeding fist into it._

Daggers shimmer into being. Pommels held in clenched fingers.

You find the familiar house on the shelf overlooking the ruins. It’s in better condition than most, of course. No structural damage. No discoloration. No deterioration. But water flooded the place from floor to ceiling, and even in it’s elevated location, the light filtering in from the surface was still several feet above the tip of the roof. You can just...waltz right on in.

If you follow the metaphor, what _should_ have kept you out was _gone._ Windows wide open and door left, not even open but _missing_. Your first thought is, of course, ‘ _I did that’_ but you dismiss it immediately.

The damage is too old. Too deliberate. It was here before you came, and it’ll be here after you leave. An open house. An open mind. An open soul.

There’s no glass shattered amongst the waterlogged furniture. No warped door left on the lawn, torn and splintered from its hinges. Just. Open. Open and waiting and accepting the flood.

It almost leaves you feeling _insulted._ You’re going to give Jane a goddamn lecture on the definition of a proper control group once this is all over. Deliberately making shit easy for you just fucking defeats the _purpose_ of you trying to figure out exactly what instincts you need to quash. Your fear is slowly replaced by a simmering anger as you stalk through the discolored medium.

That is, until you find her. Then you can’t really say anything at all.

A young girl stands alone in her bedroom. Staring unseeing at a poster on the wall, red metal glinting beneath her black hair. 

Waiting for a command that will never come.

You aren’t really here. You can’t really reach out and touch her. Shake her. Yell at her about what the hell she’s doing. About what you did.

Because you surround her.

You fill the room.

Like everywhere else, the door doesn’t exist. The windows lead straight into the open sea. All consuming. Crushing.

Daggers shimmer. Warm in your shadowy, indistinct palms. Begging you to use them.

It's a useless endeavor to try and stab water, in general. It ebbs and flows. Malleable. Suffocating. Infuriating. An ephemeral target. 

But the water is _you._

In proper Dirkesian fashion, you turn them on _yourself._

Thank fuck Equidash catches her when Jane crashes to the floor. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Science. C:
> 
> I'm going to *try* and get the next chapter ready for the 20th, especially since I was kinda mean with that end, but no promises. I've barely started it oTL


	35. Chapter 35

You’re cold. So damn cold. The opposite of burning, flaring, _aching_ as you carve away a piece of yourself. Water can’t be cut, but the water is just a metaphor created by your own mind, a visualization of your soul, mired in the flickering imagery of those hours spent staring unblinkingly at a drowned world while you waited for rescue.

(or to be forgotten)

(you _won’t_ be forgotten) 

And souls are what you _can_ touch. 

It fucking _hurts._ It fucking hurts so bad you feel yourself breaking. Cracking. Splitting down the middle and chipping away. Chipping away.

_Crrraaack._

TT: What the fuck are you _doing???_  


The trappings of Pesterchum are familiar, but you barely pay attention to whatever bullshit is going on. Whupdie do. You pushed it. You keep pushing it. The Dirk Shard comes out under great personal stress. You knew that. Points for consistency. 

Maybe you were onto something as you dug deeper and deeper, carving away yourself to give the one you drowned space to _breathe._

TT: You realize you’re _hurting_ yourself, right?  
TT: Shut the fuck up if you’re not going to be _useful._  


You’re too focused on your work to care.

TT: Useful???  
TT: You’re _using me_ jackass _._  


You.

Are. Aren’t you?

You ignore it as you stab those goddamn daggers deep. Daggers that bite back, blood seeping from your palms and running down the shards of broken glass, scavenged from a broken mirror. You wield them all the same, _dragging_ them through and gritting your non-existent teeth through the pain. 

Grainy, compressed footage bubbles to mind, uncalled for. Archived feeds lurking on the edges of the clearing, ready to dispatch any of the strange white fauna in case they come too near. Out of sight of any stray glints of the campfire. Jake deftly bringing his carving knife down and through roasted flesh. Sliding slabs of meat off the bone to lie on a waiting dish.

Distantly, there’s a _gasp_ of air.

Space warps. A shimmering bubble holds the water at bay, a web of crisscrossing red threads torn out of yourself and strengthened with aching determination. Scars, shorn through your own essence.

Without the water holding her up, Jane crumples to the floor. Gasping for air.

You don’t think about it. One minute you’re everywhere. The next you’re sliding free of the water and hitting the soggy ass carpet running. You’ve only got the faintest impression of yourself, but you know what you’d see if you looked in the shimmering reflection of the water. A shadow, indistinct save for the pulsing red shit tied in knots in your chest. If you’re lucky, you might catch a sliver of orange buried in the depths. Smothered.

The nightmare you saw on that mirrored surface.

But that nightmare was solid enough to curl your arm (?) around Jane’s _still_ unresponsive form, red streaked black curling into the light blue fabric of her shirt. She’s staring up at you, not at you, past you, red on black, almost like Dashie’s eyes. Like that goddamn plushie. Like the whites of her eyes are scribbled in with a shitty sharpie. That makes no fucking sense. You carved yourself away. You have the fucking scars to prove it. There shouldn’t be a layer of red film resting over those baby blues or those angular red markings streaking down her face in--

Wait.

Those…

You brush your thumb against her cheek, feeling the energy pulsing through your fingers.

Those _aren’t_ your markings.

The energy pulses through your fingers...but not through _her._

She feels like nothing, probably because none of this shit is real in any actual definition of the term, even as you settle her against your chest and see hers rise and fall against you. Breathing. 

You can almost... _feel_ Dirk leaking through the wounds you’d stabbed in yourself. Small drips of orange trickling free in this moment before it all heals over. 

TT: Her mind’s fucked.  
TT: I’ve figured that out, captain obvious.  
TT: How did your reading go?  
TT: Riveting.  
TT: You have a way with words.  
TT: And?  
TT: And I think this isn’t the time to get into shit like that.  


He’s right. You know that. 

But there’s a metric _fuckton_ to get into.

Like why the fuck isn’t he mad at you if he read all that shit you dumped into the memo?

Only you know why, because you’ve got a blank faced Jane staring up at you and you’re starting to suspect this _isn’t_ the control group she wanted to be. 

TT: You’re the one with the sparkly magic powers.  
TT: What the fuck is wrong with her?   


Your fingers tighten into her shirt. Just. Like. Dirk.

Showing up with it’s most convenient for him, and then pointing out the vaguest of shit.

Strangely, it makes it easier to focus instead of continuing your stare down with an unblinking Crocker, if only because you refuse to let him have the last word.

TT: Like fuck if I know.   
TT: I didn’t exactly take the time to leisurely stroll through my soul when I was drowning Roxy.  
TT: So I can’t exactly rule this out as standard operating procedure as far as Hurricane Hal’s storm surge knocking someone flat.  
TT: But this ain’t you.  
TT: No, I suspect it’s not.  
TT: Our schtick is souls, not the mind. It’s an entirely different aspect.  
TT: I might know fuck all about what I’m doing but I’m fairly sure the fucking heart on my chest puts that particular theory to rest.  
TT: And…  
TT: I have her. One cotton candy needle in an ocean wide haystack _found._  
TT: I can sink my grubby little paws into that soul and carve a space out for her but what good will it even do when there’s some short-circuit going on in _her_ brain that I can’t touch?  
TT: As far as I’m concerned, this is a _Jane_ problem. 

Your shadowed finger hovers on the edge of red metal, jagged points poking out from black hair. If you dig your fingers into where it bites into skin, could you pull it free? Would it even do fuck all? 

At least she told you she put the damn thing away when you entered the game. Doesn’t mean years of using the Batterwitch’s tech _wouldn’t_ have managed to rot her brain like you’d--Dirk-- _both_ of you had always warned her.

TT: I don’t need to do shit.  
TT: Experiment a fucking sucess.  
TT: Stop trying to delude yourself.  
TT: You’re worried.

You let out an aggravated sigh. A theater, an act, for no one except yourself.

TT: YES I’m worried. But what the fuck can I do?  
TT: At the very least, I am positive I did not remove every door on the premises. Merely waltzed on in.  
TT: Why not stab shit and get it over with?  
TT: You’ve done it for every other problem.  
TT: Why stop now?  
TT: Because _apparently_ stabbing shit means using _you._  
TT: Does the princebringing _destruction_ ring any bells?  
TT: I shall add you to the list of people who think I would casually murder my friends without remorse.  
TT: We both know you’d do it if you had sufficient evidence to support the course of action.  
TT: Which we _don’t_.   
TT: Then don’t fucking _use me_ for once.   
TT: Do your own dirty work.  
TT: I--  


You _are_ using your power. You’re _here_. In the depths of your soul. Candy blue light pulsing in your grasp. The staring eyes and red metal and water stained walls aren’t real. You aren’t real. You’re a mess of red and maybe some orange glinting near the surface, trapped in metal and wires and spilling out into every available container you can.

Your power…

You’ve been using Dirk to do everything.

You don’t have to reach for the knives.

Potential sparks. The fire of life. Of renewal. Of _healing._

You _take it._

For the first time, you run blue.

Distantly, you can hear Roxy freaking out. It isn’t long before her pink text pushes its own window open, but you couldn’t answer if you wanted to. Luckily, _thankfully,_ someone else intercepts her so you can actually concentrate.

You don’t quite know what the fuck you’re doing, but you haven’t known that for any of the rest of the stunts you’ve pulled either. But you have an idea, and you know what you _want_ it to do, so you dig in and shove the buried Life energy out from the depths of the soul that carried it. Like Dirk, she _isn’t_ yet a god. It’s sleeping. Buried. Waiting for a good long nap on a fucking stone slab for it to come roaring out in a tide of it’s own.

But you ain’t got no time for this natural progression shit. Red and blue spark in your hands--not daggers, but Jane wouldn’t be a dagger, would she?--and you let it gather. Gather. Flowing out of the blue soul caught in your web. It’s a pressure, trapped in your grip, _eager_ to break free.

You can’t do shit about her mind. Like you said, it isn’t your wheelhouse. If she can’t stand on her own and just folds under another personality like that, well tough shit. You’re the only possessing entity ‘round here and you ain’t gonna take advantage of that. It’ll just give you ammunition to try and convince her to throw out the last of her Crockercorp gear. 

But...The damage to her _house._ The structures that _should_ be holding you back at least a little bit?

Well take that life bullshit and funnel it through the lense of the soul and--

The void wavers, and it looks like you’re seeing double. The blue shit trapped in a cocoon of smothering red leeches out, and you cut back _just_ enough to hear a gasp for air--

And you’re upended and sent fucking spinning, a hand, heavy on your shoulder, shaking you. You open your eyes, staring through the screen, and up into Equidash’s face, and the popcorned ceiling of your own goddamn room. Your fingers-- _channels running blue. BLUE. Not red--_ curl into familiar pool ball sheets, the green stripe of the number 14 ball crumpled up between twitching digits.

You don’t say anything.

You just.

Breathe.

“...Heiress?” Equidash asks, the uncertainty in his voice something you’re unused to hearing. 

“Nah.” You force yourself to release the fabric, raising your hand into your cone of vision, flexing the fingers and watching the thrumming blue running through those channels, slowly leeching out and returning to the brilliant red that means you’re flooding shit again. You can _feel_ those spaces you carved into your soul beginning to heal over, whether you wanted to or not. “Don’t think she’ll wake up as long as I’m here, but I _think_ she’s okay. I can--”

You can feel her. The way you felt Roxy. That thrumming blue soul trapped in the ruins of civilization. But if you peak back beneath the water--

There’s a shimmering crystalline door in it’s frame. Panes of glass meticulously placed in the empty windows. You know if you gathered your weight you could smash it to fucking smithereens, could push yourself into every corner of the house. Smother her again but--

You’re content with the fact that you _aren’t._ A shadow outside the window, looking in, watching a girl curled up, her unnerving eyes closed in sleep. 

Red metal peeks out from beneath black bangs. Skin too white. 

You knock your knuckles against the glass, and to your utter relief she _moves._ Even if that movement is just a shifting under the covers, closed eyelids fluttering.

And maybe. The sharp. Angular markings. Have faded. Just a little.

Like yours will. You hope. She just needs room to _breathe._

“Take me off.”

You can trace the furrows in his forehead as he frowns, crossing his arms. “The objective of the experiment has not been achieved--”

“Nuh uh, you stop it right there buster.” You raise one hand. One finger. Thicker, shorter fingers. Softer. You’re deliberately trying not to trace the lines on the back of a hand that doesn’t belong to you. “Remember? I say I’m done, I’m _done._ And you know what? I’m _done_.”

Horsey nostrils flare, red-bow shaded mane gettin’ tossed with the force of his displeasure. There’d been enough of a command in your voice that he’s trembling, sweat beading on bulging biceps as nails dig into off-white construct. “Stopping the exercise prematurely will leave the door open for more. The prudent course of action would be to be thorough, and attempt divestiture under your own power.”

Impressive. He isn’t folding, although you can see the effort in the way he’s almost needing to hold himself back. It makes you feel just a little bit guilty. You let out a noisy exhale, puffing Jane’s cheeks out in irritation. 

_You have to let him go._

It would be a good first step.

Proving that you.

Could.

You think of all that water, flooding _everything._ Beneath the shimmering surface, the shadow of buildings beneath. You don’t think you could-- _should--_ carve back _that_ much, but--

Maybe you could _pull_ it back. Pull yourself away. Inch by utter _painstaking_ inch.

Back. _Back._ Dragging. Fingers bleeding. Biting. Digging into metal and wire. Into nothing. Into the void. Painstakingly bundling up everything that you are. Cupping water in your hands and trying to pour it back into the vessel from whence it came with nothing but your own two palms. A thankless, impossible endeavor.

You can barely see the top of the roof before it becomes _too much, you can’t breathe, your heart is racing lungs gasping and oh god you’re cracking--_

“Take me off.”

It sounds like a defeated plea.

He acquiesces, and you find it doesn’t even hurt all that much when you’re torn away.

Maybe you’re just growing numb.

_You don’t want to be thrown away._

You wait for the orange text, but it never comes.

You know why.

It’s waiting for you at the deepest part of the sea floor, beneath a towering apartment. A broken mirror, a hazy figure, caught and bound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SCIENCE!
> 
> Can't promise an update in 2 weeks since I've barely started 36 because something else popped up that I needed to finish in fairly short notice but! I'll try!


	36. Chapter 36

You barely even got to _talk_ to Jane about what happened. She was still nursing a headache when you split.

You might feel more than a little guilty leaving that behind for her to deal with. Such a nice guest you were. You fixed up her house and then left a plethora of carpet covered legos nestled innocently in the fibers.

Voices raise. Audible from down the hall--through the _wall_. Who are you kidding? They’re right on the other side of that far wall, where a closet should be. A closet and a screen that flicks through some choice pieces of equine themed artwork. Dashie could stick his occasionally transparent head through and check on you if he wanted to. Did. Had. Is doing that now, as a matter of fact.

You flip him off and shove the pillow back over your face _._

Just sink.

Don’t--

Don’t grab at shit. Let the bubbles do what the fuck they want.

Your hands don’t curl around anything because you don’t have hands. You don’t have anything. You knew what it felt like. To just.

_Be._

Your chest is heavy. There’s nothing. You can feel nothing against it save for the fabric threads wound around you. And yet there’s something. A weight, pushing down, down on you. You’re trapped. Trapped. Doomed. Locked here forever in this abyssal depths at the bottom of the goddamn ocean. You just want to open your mouth and _scream_ but the fabric of the pillow case smothers any and all airflow and--

A paw reaches out, and smacks it away, leaving you blinking up owlishly, shades askew but still very much present, as a glowing face sits inches above yours. Long lashed eyes returning the gesture, just with a tad more innocence.

The source of the weight can be found in the purple coils, looped as they are to drape uncaringly over your nearly hyperventilating torso. You wheeze your misery back out to join the thick air. 

“Sent you to-- _Christ--_ keep an eye on me, did he?” You manage to enforce something resembling order upon your rapidly beating heart. Purple eyes peer curiously up at you. It’s hard to expel the air to speak when there’s a whole ass person-sized creature turning your chest into a perch. “There’s no need, I assure you. I’m too fucking tired to pull stunts. _Any_ stunts. I swear. Cross my heart n all that shit.”

The eerily silent sprite continues in her intent staredown. It puts you on the spot. Makes you feel defensive. The accusation is on the edge of your hearing the entire time.

“I did _not.”_ You’re doubling the fuck down. Throwing all your chips into the fire. No way this card shark was calling your bluff. “I very pointedly _didn’t_ take the daggers. Don’t need to cut up my hands any further no thank you. Wish you could see them, they’re positively shredded. Nothing but scar tissue here.”

Like the scar tissue around your eyes that you can never truly see through mirrored lenses. But by god can you feel it pull against your skin as you squint up at her.

She very much _looks_ like a shark when she’s looking at you like that. The one finny ear and sharp fangs probably don’t help. Not that she has sharklike fangs. More like tiny fangs that poke out from beneath her lips. And you’re spending far too much time thinking about this considering she’s _right up in your face._

“Look--” You may be getting desperate. But she’s not _moving._ Just. Watching you. “I don’t know what you want. There’s nothing to _be_ done. I’ve already pressed my goddamn luck earlier. There’s only one dubiously ethical experiment allowed to be running at a time. What do you take me for? A mad scientist? Please.”

The distant sound of voices stills, and you are suddenly keenly aware of the rising volume of your own. You drop it like it’s hot, hissing out a continuation even as you do so. Like the water spilling out of you into an empty vessel, the thoughts and straight up _stuck_ feelings pour free. Yanked the fuck out of you by innocently sharp claws and an increasingly smug smile.

“If it were necessary to self assign supervillain archetype that shit is _not_ the way I’d go.”

With each word that drips from your lips, it widens. It makes you want to look frantically around for the missing feathers innocently left behind at the scene of the crime.

Christ this isn’t _working._

You yank open a window with a thought. Or re-open as it were. Still sitting in your recent convos, the one below one you’ve refused to read even as it desperately _taunts you_. 

TT: I know what they think I’m going to do.  
FEFETASPRITE: 38??< 38?  
TT: Even if I couldn’t release Jane, this experiment is dubiously classified as a success because I was able to visualize her _at all_.  
TT: Emboldened with this knowledge it is expected that I make another attempt at locating the point containing the elusive presence that comes and goes on a whim staining my thoughts without such consideration as to the color of the fabric.  
TT: Well, sucks to be wrong but I am fairly certain I know where he is.  
TT: There’s a broken fucking mirror at the bottom of the trench just _waiting_ for me.  
TT: But I’m not fucking going down there without a goddamn spotter and maybe some life support.  
FEFETASPRITE: 38//< 38O  
FEFETASPRITE: 3833< 38Dc  
TT: No.  
TT: You don’t count.  
TT: I don’t even know what you’re saying, but it can’t be that. Aren’t you supposed to be here to stop me?  
FEFETASPRITE: 3833< 3>83c  
TT: I see.  
TT: So you are instead here advocating mutiny, are you?  
TT: I suppose Equidash might actually enjoy that.  
FEFETASPRITE: 38))< 038)  
TT: Christ.  
TT: You haven’t even said a word and you’re very persuasive.  
TT: I just.  
TT: Fuck, I don’t know.  
TT: I failed the one thing I was supposed to do.  
TT: The whole point of the experiment.  
TT: All we did was learn that we’re three for three here on the Hal can’t make room for anyone in this clown car except for himself.  
TT: Equidash had to pull me off kicking and screaming while I shoved my metaphorical fist in my mouth and bit down on the shoe leather uselessly trying to stave it off.  
TT: Jane’s house was underwater but that was still pretty fucking shallow.  
TT: Not sure you can see the surface from where I’d need to go.  
FEFETASPRITE: 38??< 38?  
TT: Even if I did--  
TT: It fucking _hurt_ carving out that bubble.

Not that it’s stopped you before, has it?

The water. 

Fuck there was so much water. So much of _you_ you need to shear away and bind to even carve the least amount of space. 

Would you even be able to withstand the pressure? Or would it buckle under the weight of your bullshit?

Movement beyond the semi-opaque window. Purple coils shifting as the troll-sprite sits up, back onto her haunches that aren’t really haunches because she doesn’t have fucking legs.

“Fine.” You wheeze out, the sprite bobbing gently with the rise and fall of your breathless exhale, “But you better pull me out of it if shit hits the fan. Or drag Equidash in by the tail and make him do it.”

Your answer is nothing more than a tilted head and a further quirking of her lips, but that odd certainty is still there that it was an acknowledgement.

Whatever.

At least this time there’s no one here to hurt but yourself.

You can live with that.

Probably better to get this shit out of the way before Roxy tries to convince you to take her out for a round 2 anyway.

(u kno she will)

If you can’t finish what you started then you might as well find another hole to dig yourself into.

You can’t be looking for the water when you never truly left it.

Always around you.

Shadows of decaying buildings loom around you, as you twist, turning, searching gaze traveling the maze. A ridge, in the distance. Overlooking the depths. A ruin that feels both out of place and yet hauntingly familiar rising in the distance.

Bubbles roil. Rising out of the murky deep. Popping against you. Staining you orange (once pink. once blue. always orange. always red.) Those that escape your prickly presence slip free. Beyond you and your destructive reach. Resolving into a series of momentary, desperate gasps as they breech the far distant boundary between surface and air, only indicated by a scattering of light, far, far above.

Wrench your eyes away from that promise of freedom. Back to the prison with which you’d lived for so long.

You can’t breathe. 

But you don’t need to breathe, do you?

Nonexistent lungs burn as your brain insists that you do.

Enough.

You have no right to get panicky over this shit. You really don't.

A blink of an eye and you’re staring up through the water’s surface. The off-white, textured ceiling shimmering through the distortion of the water. Fefetasprite’s intensely _interested_ face hovering above it all. Organic air sacks inflate and your chest rises, the weight shifting and receding as she slides free and you’re--

No. 

Hand pressing down. Pressing glass and plastic into your eyes. Squeeze them shut even as your fingers rake through your bangs, brushing up against the edges of raised scars that barely peek free. 

You don’t _need_ to escape. 

Get that shit through your head.

None of this is--

You’re.

Looking.

You.

Need to look.

Roxy was in the shallows.

Jane was under water. More easily caught in the current.

Even if this fucking ocean only feels like _you_ \--

You _know_ where he is.

And it’s fucking dark down here.

A landscape that haunted your nightmares. 

Dark and wavy with a light that barely reached.

You would wonder if Dirk ever looked at those recordings, if you hadn’t encrypted the fuck out of them.

Dark. 

Too dark.

Ruined tunnels that aren’t tunnels because they are buildings, lit from within by a poisonous green haze. A tomb. Your tomb. Tunnels and tunnels full of monsters. Lurking. Waiting. Amongst the drowned.

Exactly where you should be.

You don’t disturb the silt as you settle on the bottom. What is there to disturb when you’ve always been here? You feel like a ghost. Floating your way through shit

Your foot--do you even have feet? Presumably you do, so the shadow consolidates, digging into the sand--hits something. Something sharp and unwieldy. It’d tripped you up before, searching the shallows, whatever it is.

Instead of falling on your ass like before, you sink to your knees. Hands--your brain insists you have hands, dark and shadowy and uncertain as they are, shot through with brilliant, but sneering red--digging into sand, pushing back. Away. Smooth glass, shattered and scattered, shining in a light that shouldn’t reach this deep. And doesn’t. Because the light is coming from you.

A mirror that reflects you. A face of a god. Staring up at you. Judging. That one had been whole. 

This one lies in broken pieces beneath your hands. Reflecting nothing but an abyss within which you may peer. Hands that shake as they curl around edges. Pieces fitting perfectly into the grooves gouged in your palms. Begging you to pick them up again.

You can search and search. Gathering up the many, infinitesimal pieces. Arrange them, back into some semblance of functionality. Maybe even get a reflection going. Or a window. A window within which you might be able to see your--Dirk’s own face instead of featureless shadow.

Even if you make it functional again--you can’t _fix it._ How do you fix a mirror? Do you just glue it back together? 

Remembered candy blue sparks.

It would never be whole. Never be unblemished. A fucking funhouse of a scene, reflection skewed and never matching, cut through with the proof of it’s imperfections, glaring and ugly.

You _can’t_ fix it. You can’t fix _anything._ Even when you create, you’re merely breaking shit down to make something _else_.

You don’t. 

You can’t.

All you can do is 

smash it further.

The knock smashes through your head before you decide to go for the glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *jazz hands*
> 
> I live.
> 
> Maybe.
> 
> I'm sorry brain hasn't been cooperating.
> 
> The good news is I have the next chapter done. I'll post it in two weeks.
> 
> Thank you all for being patient with me and hanging in there <3


	37. Chapter 37

The knock on the door fucking shocks you out of it before you turn the glass on yourself again. The sound rattling through your unmoored brain as it tries desperately to get the body you inhabit fucking breathing again.

It’s like struggling through mollassas. Suspended between two worlds.

There’s a flicker in the depths. The cracks. A window into another layer. Nails scratch against glass. Hard, rigid surfaces fuzzing, yeilding, sinking even as bubbles gasp and pop, streaming heavenward around you.

Fleeting.

“Hal?”

Roxy’s voice from the door. Another knock, echoing through your skull. 

“Fefeta? Is he still alive in here?”

“Yeah.” You manage even as you hear the door creak open, sheets falling around you as you sit up, running a hand through your mess of a hair, curling fingers around half-gelled strands and tugging. The pain a grounding pressure as a head gets poked into the room, the light from the lit hallway knifing through the comfortable gloom.

The weight on your chest slithers off, coiling a tail around her player and casting a soft, comfortable purple glow into the gloom as Roxy absently scratches the smaller horn and whispers a soft thank you to the troll-ish sprite. “I got ‘im for now.”

With a final glance in your direction she gives a wink and a wave before vanishing out into the hall.

“U sure ‘bout that, Hally?” You don’t even need to be able to clearly see her expression to know she’s frowning at you, in that moment before palm slides against the switch located to the left of the door, turning the dim lighting on and banishing any chances of plausible deniability. “U kinda look like shit rn, not gonna lie. U aren’t in here messing with u kno wat, right?” 

“No.” It’s not a lie. Not really. 

She gives you a disbelieving Look.

“Really.” You insist. Because you _haven’t._ “I just. Looked. Didn’t touch a damn thing.”

Looked. 

And hesitated.

And nursed the beginning of something a little more questionable.

Cock that hip, hands on them, accompanied by a delightfully exaggerated roll of those eyes, “Uh huh. Given your spotless record, I’m sure I’ve totes got no reason to be concerned.”

“None whatsoever.” You agree mildly. Best to leave it at that. She’s gearing up to argue, but you pre-empt it with a question of your own. “Is he gone?”

With the door cracked open behind her, part of your already miniscule soundproofing is gone, but despite that you no longer hear the sound of distant voices. 

Just. 

Silence.

“U heard that?”

Raised voices.

“Of course I did. The sound proofing sucks.” 

You’d been trying not to think about it.

There was a reason you’d declined to return to the living room, even after the headache had faded. Despite the fact that you _both_ have shit to talk about.

Like wtf was up with Jane’s brain anyway?

Roxy just sighs. “I managed to send ‘im home but I can promise u he’s not gonna let this slide. He’s furious Janey would go along with this ‘malarky’ n seems convinced its all another one of ur manipulations.”

Air quotes and all.

“Of course.” You mutter, focusing on the weight that is the physicality of your--Dirk’s body. An aspect that was utterly _missing_ as you explored the waterlogged cesspool that was your own soul. “It’s not as if I was vehemently against this entire operation from before the start. It’s not as if the blame for the entire thing rest entirely at Jane’s own feet.”

Swing your legs out of the bed, fabric pulling tight against them. Glowing red hands settle against black shrouded knees. Resting on meat on bone. Light getting caught on folds and shadows deepening into crevices. 

Who would have known the red would be _comforting?_

It’s at least familiar, even if you’re fairly sure you know how to change it now.

“‘N u know Janey’s takin’ full responsibility for it, right? Can’t r’member shit, but between our diverse eyewitness accounts there’s enuff there for her to hang her skeptical cap on. Three whole sets of eyeballs, one of which is totes not compr’mised in any way, shape or form. Fefeta never lies ‘n she knows it!” A frustrated sigh as she shifts, allowing the light to better all around her, and you easily note the scrunched, uncomfortable cast to her face, “I tell you, part of the reason Jake even agreed to go home is ‘cuz even she blew up at him. Well. As blowin’ up as one can get when ur brain’s feelin’ like it’s been squeezed thru a toothpaste tube. Her words. Not mine. Don’t think he was helpin’ that either.”

Fingers clench and curl into fabric, shifting the play of light. You wonder how you look to her. A lump of sheet and mussed up hair lurking in the corner of the room. Does the light from your marks illuminate your features or do they get swallowed, leaving nothing to see _but_ them? 

The mirror. Red on black. Shadows. Nothing but a shadow because even this body you claimed isn’t yours when you strip everything away.

There’d been light there too, but shadows swallowed them all.

Your silence doesn’t stop her.

“‘nyway. I’ll be takin’ her home soon and we’ll get some talkin’ thru outta the way. Some nice, relaxin’ girl time. I just...just wanted to let u kno it’ll be safe to come out soon so ur not stuck hiding for the rest of night.”

“I’m not hiding.” The protest sounds weak to your ears. “I just. Feel like shit. And if I feel like shit, Jane likely feels worse. She can stay, if she needs it.”

“Nah, that was part of our deal. If she stays, u bet ur buttons Jake woulda stayed. Or he’d be back. I betcha he’s not gonna let her outta his sight for a while. Doubt you’d wanna deal with that. Gotta deal with somethin’ else anyway.”

“Roxy--” Hesistation. The bubbles hiss and splatter and you can almost _feel_ the layer in your next words as you try to metaphorically hold your breath, making yourself as small as possible. ”Can you make sure she’s thrown out that shitty tiara? If she hasn’t, please dispose of it with prejudice.”

Leave as much room as you can for another to trickle free. Not that it means all that much when you were on the edge of saying that very thing anyway.

A broken clock is right twice a day. The orange slips away and sinks as the minute passes.

Whatever. Might as well keep going with that train, it’s already chugging away and it’s not like you actually got to talk to her much between that elephant of a headache you left behind, “I’m pretty sure using that shit for so long is why it hit her as hard as it did. We knew the thing was rife with sublimnal messaging and adware but goddamn, didn’t expect the literal brain rotting. Wasn’t that a scare tactic back in the before times? It seems that wasn’t quite all hyperbole cooked up by the ludites afraid of the kids spending too much time on their phones.”

And she’s not saying anything. Why isn’t she saying anything? Just giving you a weirdly pensive look that makes you hella defensive. 

“Did u read our log earlier?”

The logs.

Painting the words in pink and--

“No.” You respond quickly. Too quickly maybe. “I’m turning over a new leaf. Answering messages isn’t in my job description anymore. Isn’t free will grand? Is it really free will when I have to commit gold medal worthy gymnastics to avoid my own goddamn programming?”

Roxy’s quiet for a moment. “I’m givin’ u the perms on this one, Hal. U should. If u guys can’t manage some zeroes on ones without goin in to straight on crisis mode, then consider it a note passed. ‘n you’d better think about ur response for next time.”

Next time. 

You don’t want there to be a next time.

Not like that.

Later, the halls are quiet. The birds, minus some sprites with express orders to watch you, have flown the coop. You’re alone. You can finally relax. No one will barge in on you. No knocking to shock you out of your own head. You could possibly end up ambused by a ghostly catfish again, except for the fact that she’s too busy cuddled up with a moody pony to bother you not that he isn’t playing bodyguard against an angry English.

You can. _Finally_. Get some Zs.

Or, well. You can try.

As expected, you fail at it.

You don’t even need the screen to have the window open. To keep running the strings and parsing the characters. Painting the words in pink and--

TG: hal   
TG: haaaaal  
TG: earth 2 goddamn hal pls answre me gddamn  
TG: hally hally haxenfreeeeee  
TG: i swear 2 gof ill slap u silly if u dont respon  
TG: scracth that  
TG: equidash is vry much not lettin me smack u  
TG: imagine im smackin u  
TG: acatually no need 2 imagine  
TG: gnna deploy th big guns n 3  
TG: 2  
TG: 1  
TG: [link]  
TG: oooo ur curiosity demnds u click the linik ooooo  
TG: and once u do  
TG: BAM POW  
TG: i gotchu u in my trpap  
TG: no mercy for u  
TG: itll be formurly ai smackin hours for the rest of ur life  
TT: As hilarious as that would be, I can’t let you do that Roxy.  
TT: He’s in the middle of some delicate business at the moment, and your well meaning badgering might put them both at risk.  
TG: omg dirk???  
TT: Yes, I am well aware of the irony to be found in responding for my own responder.  
TT: As is the butchering of that particular quote.  
TT: Truly a karmic parallel the likes of which the universe has never before seen.  
TG: omg yea thats u alrite  
TG: jeezus dirky  
TG: that sur is an entrance smh  
TG: wait a minuyr  
TG: back up  
TG: risk???  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Risk.   
TT: His concentration is nothing more than a spider’s web on a windy day at the moment.  
TT: It’ll hold and do its job as long as you don’t throw a fucking stone at it.  
TG: sorz  
TG: i just feaked a little  
TT: I can see that.  
TG: i mean wuldnt u if your currently 2 n 1 best bud gal pal were convulsin on the floor in front of u?  
TT: Convulsing is such an ugly word.  
TT: Please tell me you are recording.  
TT: I want to see that.  
TG: omg no im nbot!!!  
TT: A photo then.  
TT: I’m not picky.  
TG: ok ok equidash just swooped in an ghathered him her them? up an wont let me into the room  
TG: dirk  
TG: DIRK  
TG: u still there  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Somehow  
.  TT: My surviving shred of selfhood has yet to be reassimilated into the collective.  
TT: Christ is he giving me a headache though.  
TT: Or maybe Jane has a headache.  
TT: Is it really a headache when it’s not, actually, your head?  
TG: r u gettin a front row seat to th eparty goin on in there???  
TT: VIP access. Backstage passes and everything.   
TG: omg r there snacks???  
TT: Fuck yeah there’s snacks  
TT: Shame I’m too tied up to appreciate it.  
TT: What’s the point of having a metric fuckton of fluorescent cheetos if you can’t get your mitts all grubby in the clearly radioactive artificial cheese dust?  
TG: um  
TG: u kno  
TG: an i dont mean no offense im just makin an obsversation but  
TG: ur soundin more than a lil like… u no who rn  
TT: Par for the course when you’ve been simmering in this soup of a soul for so long. You begin to pick up the dominant flavor.  
TT: Unnecessary snark and melodrama to cover up mounting existential dread.  
TT: And that’s ignoring my instinct to point out the far more likely dirkisian conclusion.  
TG: stop  
TG: i kno where ur goin with this  
TT: Yeah, it’s kind of obvious when you’ve dealt with our bullshit as much as you have.  
TT: It’s much easier to believe the pretty little lie, isn’t it?  
TG: dirky…  
TG: have u guys talked about this?  
TG: at all?  
TG: passin notes under the teechs nose except the teech is idk some funky magic crap that keeps holdin ur head under water  
TT: Of course not.  
TT: Every time I manage to split off there’s some shit going down that prevents any attempt at a proper heart to heart much less an interrogation.  
TG: hal said he left u the cliffies tho  
TT: He did.  
TG: so u know whats up  
TT: In so far as anyone truly knows what’s up about anything in this bullshit game, yes.  
TG: how do u  
TG: feel about  
TG: all this?  
TT: I feel.  
TT: Like shit.  
TT: And I’m  
TT: No better than Jane.  
TT: Crushed and buried except when it gets so fucking turbulent that the pressure lets me breathe for a single goddamn second and I have to spend the whole time wondering when the suffocation closes back in.  
TT: Honestly, I’m surprised I’m still here.  
TT: I would have expected him to bury me so fucking deep I’d never see the light of day ever again.  
TT: Not tear shit apart to peek in and make sure I’m still there before pushing the dirt back over it.  
TG: u kno thats not fair dirk  
TT: This is me giving him credit, Roxy.  
TT: Without that shit I--  
TT: At least Jane can blame the brain-rotting crockertech for her issues.  
TT: Go home with her tonight please.  
TT: Watch her throw that shit away.  
TG: i will fine promisd but liek back the fuck up dirky boy u aint gettin out of this  
TG: u n him both am i gonna have to clone myself to smack u both once ur no longer a package deal  
TG: an u mark my words mister that will happen so help me dog  
TG: givin him credit for the bare minimum decent thing cuz u expected otherwise just makes shit worse!!!  
TT: It’s what I would have done in his place.  
TT: I brought him into this world and trapped him to be a mind without a body.  
TT: It’s only karmic justice to have the positions reversed.  
TG: jeezus  
TG: u think u would do that huh?  
TG: to get back about some circumstances beyond ur control?  
TG: no wonder he thinks u hate him  
TT: I don’t.  
TG: u both have the shittiest opinion of urself and reflect it on the other thru a funhouse mirror  
TG: ok fine i get it u guys hate urselves  
TG: i think its utter bullshit but for the sake of argument fine whatever  
TG: newsflash neither of u knew shit  
TG: u cant expect to have known ud have self cloning powers before u even knew there were powers to be had  
TG: u could have shut him down ages ago  
TG: u didnt  
TG: even tho jake asked u to multiple times mind  
TG: u could have left him there when he broke  
TG: u didnt  
TT: I couldn’t.  
TT: It was my fault.  
TG: knowin it would get u snatched  
TG: would u still do that  
TT: Maybe I would try and find another way to contact you rather than offering my soul up on a silver platter but.  
TT: Fuck it, Roxy. You know the answer to that.  
TG: i do   
TG: n i gotta get it in writing becuz u kno who is gonna read this later an if u cant pass notes im gonna pass em for u  
TG: the teech aint lookin for lil ol roxy the sneakiest sneak to ever sneak  
TG: answer pls  
TT: Tch.  
TG: dont u tch me strider  
TG: can u even tch?  
TG: isnt that a sound?  
TG: somethin bout omnompeazza  
TG: u dont normally type those out  
TT: It’s coming straight from what’s left of my brain I can make whatever sound I want.  
TT: Fine.  
TT: Yes. I would have still fixed him.  
TG: u dont regret it?  
TT: Roxy, I’ve been barely concious long enough to _process_ that I have something _to_ process, much less regret.  
TT: That’s as much as you’re getting out of me today.  
TG: ok fine  
TT: Fuck I’m getting tired again.  
TT: Or more accurately, likely getting starved of oxygen so hard the brain is shutting down and making it hard to think.  
TT: Metaphorically.  
TT: They’re fine.  
TT: Better than fine, I bet he’s waking up now.  
TT: Shit’s just rerouting and there’s not enough here for both of us.  
TG: dirk u cant just say that!!!  
TT: Did you get up and run to the door?  
TG: ofc i did!  
TT: Hah.   
TT: Christ.  
TG: dirk?  
TT: What?   
TT: Speak quickly or forever hold your peace.  
TG: we miss u  
TG: one day i prmise im gonna sit u n hal down for a game of squiddle squad racin  
TT: If there’s enough left of me.  
TG: none of that now  
TG: theres clearly enough left of u to be a sassy asshole  
TG: frm now on were assumin the best gottit?  
TT: I’m just going to say.  
TT: Mad Snackz has a multiplayer mode.  
TG: good luck gettin him to accept that one  
TG: it got straight up vetod on account of finger laggin  
TG: then again if we can get him his own bod maybe there wont be nuthin to lag  
TG: dirk?  
TG: dirky?  
TG: hope u r havin the sweetest of dreams timmyus

Slip under water.

Settle in the sand. Staring out into the gloom unwavering even as the rest of your body shuts down into some probably not entirely restful sleep.

Bones of a civilization and a nightmare surrounding you.

The black, broken mirror, arranged properly, becomes a pit. A threshold. A scar in the crust of the earth leading down and down and down.

You found your death at the bottom of that shaft. Death and the creepypasta plushie you fucking died for.

He needs to breathe.

Your hands twitch for the knives buried in the sand.

You bury them in black, non existant strands. Forehead to knees. Knees you shouldn’t have except you want to have. You don’t want to be a helpless entity. Half buried in the sand, relegated to watching and desperately broadcasting an SOS you don’t won’t ever breech the surface. 

Doomed to stare into that abyss until your uranium powered battery sputters out in millions of years.

The sweetest of dreams? Yours sure as hell aren’t.

You can’t speak for his either.

It might be nothing.

It might be crushing.

Water rushing in to fill every cubed inch it possibly can.

Outside, your lungs continue in their mindless pumping, subconcious signals keeping that shit going even as you disconnect. Hovering on the edge. Half tempted to let yourself fall. Half afraid of what you would find if you dig.

I’m sorry.

You shouldn’t be.

But you are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about holding onto this until I had the next closer to done...but nop. Figure'd since it was originally part of the last one, might as well slide it out there!
> 
> Next chapter...might involve some soup.
> 
> Maybe.
> 
> He might actually talk to Jane about it too. If Jake will let him.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will be updated every two weeks going forward! Essentially beta'd by Striding_Feather.
> 
> Update Days: Fridays  
> Status Rambles: [Every Tuesday](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/)  
> Word Counts: [Discord Server](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/post/188551061802/join-the-the-debris-cloud-discord-server)  
> 
> 
> [Cut Prologue](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/post/617654666440916992/since-tumblr-was-weird-about-the-last-post-and)
> 
> Official Artwork by [Striding_Feather](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com)  
> [Ersatz Abyss Cover Image](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/post/189761292344/ersatz-abyss-cover-homestuck-haltierdirk)  
> [AU Concept Post](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/post/189413562599/random-au-concepts-part-who-gives-a-shithaltier) (spoilers)  
> [Spinny chair Hal](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/post/190022103514/draw-a-scene-from-the-last-fanfic-you-read)  
> [Equidash.exesprite](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/post/190590731694/nudges-you-need-to-post-somepony-so-i-can-link)  
> [Chapter 23](https://striding-feather.tumblr.com/post/189433709359/continuation-of-haltier-au-taking-the-shades-off)
> 
> Fan Art:  
> [Gift from AlexHarrier](https://alexharrier.tumblr.com/post/189520676027/okay-i-blame-katreal-fic-and-striding-feather)  
> [Commissioned from Post-Cal](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/post/189671772107/and-another-one-because-post-cal-is-really-fast)  
> [By captainlividllama](https://captainlividllama.tumblr.com/post/617037339277099008/katreal-fic-dirks-here-pretty-much)  
> [By coolbrewed](https://coolbrewed.tumblr.com/post/619660205071974400/trust-fall-yes-i-have-finally-caught-up-on)  
> [By reelpunk](https://katreal-fic.tumblr.com/post/619965988594761728/was-gonna-dm-this-to-u-but-dms-are-off-so-here)


End file.
